I had the privilege of touring and getting to see the reactor directly for an ANS student conference. Even without the politics about keeping the reactor active, the way the graduate students use the reactor seems to already be mired in bureaucracy. If I recall correctly, they have to wait on the order of a year (or more) to get one full day with the reactor to conduct their experiment.
I can only imagine how horrifying it is to have your thesis work mired in these political struggles.
I got to see it too, and got an informal tour by one of the grad students. He showed us a steel tie about a meter long, and said they'd calculated that two of them could hold down the Space Shuttle while it was trying to launch. To hold the machine together while it operates, they need 38 of them.
It's not surprising they they have so much trouble getting time on the machine. They barely have the funding to run it. During the budget problems last year they went a whole year without running it at all.
Then again, the experiment involves controlling the hot plasma of nuclear reactions using little more than a vacuum and magnets. Nothing like some miserable bureaucracy to separate the responsible adults from the children looking for new toys. I'll take one individual's disillusionment over a nuclear accident any day of the week. Not to mention that one year in college goes by so fast that it's pretty much over before it started.
I can only imagine how horrifying it is to have your thesis work mired in these political struggles.