UMD Chemical Fire Sends 17 to the Hospital
Stadium Drive between Regents Drive and Paint Branch Drive were closed as officials investigated the fire. (Photo | The Diamondback).
A fire in the University of Maryland Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building this morning hospitalized 17 people. A campus alert sent by University of Maryland Police said, “Individuals were conducting a lab experiment and a chemical reaction caught on fire.”
Prince George’s County Fire Department spokesperson, Michael Yourishin, told The Diamondback that the people taken to the hospital were in not life-threatening condition and were sent as a precaution. Those people included students, fire department officials, police officers, a contractor, and a university employee.
The Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building is home to the Maryland University Training Reactor (MUTR): a 250-kilowatt fission reactor, whose core sits in a pool of water.
“The water acts as a moderator and it slows neutrons from high to low energy,” said Alex Reardon, a senior at UMD studying chemistry and geophysics.
“It also uses [low-enriched uranium zirconium] for fuel, which has a negative temperature coefficient,” Reardon continued. “As the temperature of the core increases, such as in the event of a fire, the reactivity decreases, and fission chain reactions slow down.”
University of Maryland Police reported the fire was out just after 12 p.m. A final update on the incident was issued at 4:02 p.m., stating that the section of the building where the fire was is still closed for cleanup, but the rest of the building and the adjacent roadways are back open.
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