Neutrons are a precious scientific resource—electrically neutral, strongly penetrating, and energetically well matched to elementary excitations in matter. They see atoms and ions and differences in isotopic composition. They follow motions. And they reveal magnetic and electronic properties that ar...
At 2:22 PM on August 25, 1965, the High Flux Isotope Reactor achieved criticality for the first time. Just over a year later, HFIR reached its design power of 100 megawatts, delivering the highest neutron flux of any research reactor in the world.
As its name implies, HFIR’s primary ...