Photo of the Day, Boston Style: Part IV (2011)

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That is 'The Round House' on Spring Hill in Somerville, which I believe finally has an owner who is interested in restoring it.
 
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Whoa, whoa, whoa! Where's that!!!

Only thing I can imagine is somewhere along the Grand Junction in Cambridge.
 
Yes, on the left is Metropolitan Storage Warehouse which is now pretty much surrounded by MIT.

On the right is MIT's nuclear reactor.
 
Cool. I suspected that was the reactor, but I never noticed an old brick smokestack next to it.

Such an awesome pic. :)
 
So, that's actually an un-retouched iPhone 4 photo. Isn't it cool? The hipstamatic photo didn't come off half as good.

- I didn't take it, Terry (b.f.) did. It was my suggestion though!
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Cool. I suspected that was the reactor, but I never noticed an old brick smokestack next to it.

Such an awesome pic. :)
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Urb -- the "smokestack" is actually a part of the reactor

its a vent stack forthe reactor

When you run a reaactor you make small amounts of radioactive gases as a result of several different classes of secondary reactions as well as some produced by fision. These gases are mostly inert gases such as krypton and xenon and some small amounts of tritium (heavy heavy hydrogen)

After filtering and some storage to diminish the short half life isotopes -- these are routinely vented to the atmosphere through a stack of some sort -- gooogle pix of reactors for examples.

The exact structures are different for PWR (Pressurized Water Reactors) and BWR (Boiling Water Reactors) -- most research reactors are similar to BWR (e.g. Pilgrim) in basic lower temperature and pressure of operations but use isolated cooling loops similar to the PWR limiting the water which is exposed to nuclear radiation and leakge from the fuel elements

Since the MIT's research reactor is quite low power (6 MW thermal) comparred to about 3 to 4 GW thermal for Pilgrim (BWR) or Seabrook (PWR) a lot less gas is produced -- a small thin piper would be sufficient for the MIT reactor.

I presume that when they built the reactor (1956-1958) that the stack was left over from whatever industry had occupied the site -- so they just kept it and used it
 
This one:
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Is up there with your Hancock pix. Love the theme of a repeating detail facade. Would love to see this explored on an even finer scale/sharper perspective, like your Hancock ones.

It's much harder to shoot the Pru tower because you don't have many vantage points from the actual base.
 
datadyne007 said:
This one:
012-35.jpg


Is up there with your Hancock pix. Love the theme of a repeating detail facade. Would love to see this explored on an even finer scale/sharper perspective, like your Hancock ones.

It's much harder to shoot the Pru tower because you don't have many vantage points from the actual base.
Click to expand...
yes hard to drive around the Pru
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A new tallest sprouting up in the Boston megalopolis.

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