Typical university press release doesn't provide any actually useful information. They have not created anything yet. They have a theoretical design. Good for them I guess.
Well they still might build it I imagine. Back in the 1960s BYU had a working nuclear reactor right on campus which produced a few watts of energy. The underground facility was standing at least as recently as the early 1990s.
I was thinking maybe it was some kind of research reactor like the ones we have at Oregon State University and Reed. But you weren't kidding, it was a -tiny- reactor. Atomics International L77, 10 whole watts. Licensed from 1967 to 1992 [0]
Those stairs lead to the underground physics labs. They're mostly just optic, electron imaging, and solid state labs. There is a linear accelerator and an oil drum housing some equipment from the Steven E. Jones days [1].
I remember hearing about that, and related rumors from coworkers at BYU. They'd point out the guesstimated location as we drove around campus in our work vehicle.
This always dovetailed really nicely, in our opinion, with the plain-as fact that Zion and her people would eventually become the envy of the world and could already easily out-engineer the best engineers that any first-world nation could muster.
The same sentiments were shared in classrooms with the topic of internet backbones "coincidentally passing right through" Utah. Why was it so? Well because the Lord would insist upon only the finest internet for his finest priesthood-engineers in the latter days, of course. Do your home teaching!
There were lots of lovely little cultural side-alley discussions like these.
That's because in the 1800s a 200 foot wide transcontinental telegraph right of way was established, running past the Great Salt Lake. Hundreds of cables have been laid along it. There's a string of datacenters along that line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_transcontinental_railroa...
