Etcheverry Hall houses the Departments of Mechanical , Industrial , and Nuclear Engineering of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley . Etcheverry Hall is named after Bernard A. Etcheverry , professor of irrigation and drainage from 1915 to 1951, who later served as chair of the Department of Irrigation and Drainage from 1923–51. Built in 1964, it is located on the north side of Hearst Avenue, across the street from the main campus .
7-609: The basement of Etcheverry Hall housed the Berkeley Research Reactor between 1966 and 1987. Bernard Alfred Etcheverry was born in San Diego, California , on June 30, 1881, and graduated from UC Berkeley in 1902. He married Helen Hanson on August 6, 1903, and together they had two sons, Bernard Earle and Alfred Starr. His first teaching appointment was to the Department of Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he taught during
14-812: The 1902–03 academic year. After that, he taught physics and civil engineering at the University of Nevada for two years before returning to Berkeley for the remainder of his career, from 1905 until his retirement in 1951. In addition to teaching, he served as an engineer for the construction of the Hearst Greek Theatre on the Berkeley campus . He moved into a new home in Kensington in 1953. Professor Etcheverry died on October 26, 1954, in New Haven, Connecticut. The basement reactor room currently houses large experiments for
21-519: The Department of Nuclear Engineering at Berkeley, including the Compact Integral Effects Test (CIET), which studies the thermal hydraulics, design, and operation of fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactors. The V&A Café opened on the third floor of Etcheverry Hall in June 2017. This followed a series of renovations begun in 2016 planned to take place over a 10-year period to modernize
28-507: The building. 37°52′32″N 122°15′33″W / 37.875663°N 122.25928°W / 37.875663; -122.25928 Berkeley Research Reactor The Berkeley Research Reactor was an active research nuclear reactor housed in the basement of the Etcheverry Hall in University of California, Berkeley . The reactor became critical on 10 August 1966 and was decommissioned in 1987. The Berkeley Research Reactor
35-629: The passage of the Nuclear Free Berkeley act in 1986. After the passing of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act in 1986 by the city of Berkeley which allows the city to levy fines for nuclear weapons-related activity and to boycott companies involved in the United States nuclear infrastructure. A university physics professor, Charles Schwartz, raised an official charge against the university, questioning whether specific research conducted on
42-508: Was a TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotope production, General Atomics ) Mark III open pool reactor with a steady rated thermal power of 1 MW, capable of being pulsed to 2,000 MW. Professor Lawrence Ruby was the chairman of the Nuclear Engineering Reactor Committee and held key roles in the design and analysis of Etcheverry Hall to support reactor licensing, then served as the first reactor supervisor after it
49-443: Was completed. It first achieved criticality on August 10, 1966, and was used for irradiation of various items, as a teaching tool, and to generate radionuclides . On 16 September 1985, a fuel cladding failure resulted in "unusually high concentrations of radioisotopes [...] in the reactor-room air" following the restart of the reactor after a long maintenance shutdown. Demonstrations from People's Park in 1982 and 1983 lead to
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