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Kodak Basement Lab Housed Small Nuclear Reactor
McGruber writes "The Rochester (NY) Democrat-Chronicle has the interesting story of the Eastman Kodak Co.'s Californium Neutron Flux Multiplier, which was housed in Building 82 of Kodak Park in Rochester, NY. The multiplier contained 3½ pounds of highly enriched (weapons-grade) uranium. Kodak used it to check chemicals and other materials for impurities, as well as for tests related to neutron radiography, an imaging technique. From the article: 'When Kodak decided six years ago to close down the device, still more scrutiny followed. Federal regulators made them submit detailed plans for removing the substance. When the highly enriched uranium was packaged into protective containers and spirited away in November 2007, armed guards were surely on hand. All of this — construction of a bunker with two-foot-thick concrete walls, decades of research and esoteric quality control work with a neutron beam, the safeguarding and ultimate removal of one of the more feared substances on earth — was done pretty much without anyone in the Rochester community having a clue.'"
"Cue the irrational fears and misunderstanding of these materials and processes while the coal fired power plant burns down the street" music
This way they were actually able to get it done.
"Moving nuclear materials. The usual."
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Los Angeles used to have a little experimental reactor in UCLA. It was quite controversial once residents found out about it. http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/04/ucla-history-nuclear-reactor.html
Looking at the picture of the device in TFA, doesn't it look like there are shadows of people on the wall around it?
Now, if I was a conspiracy theorist....
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Who else had one of these for easy, "on-demand" neutron generation. Bell Labs? IBM?
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
I'm not so surprised that some rather alarmingly powerful beam sources would be operated quietly by people with atypical sensor needs. I am a bit surprised that 3.5 lbs of highly enriched Uranium would be available to serve as a beam source.
Not telling the neighbors about a scary-sounding piece of industrial/scientific apparatus is one thing, having enough nuclear material to interest a proliferation wonk in your basement, on the other hand, seems like it would raise eyebrows...
The department of physics at our university (Aalto university, Finland) has their own nuclear reactor. This brings the total number of nuclear reactors in Finland to five.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
armed guards were surely on hand
This is how you discern a conservative:they speculate about things they have no knowledge of, forming conclusions based only on what they believe "ought to be" and then use that speculation as the basis for their beliefs. There's nothing in the article to suggest that armed guards were present for the removal of the enriched uranium, only the reporter's speculation.
Kodak supplied recon assistance to the U.S. during flyovers of the U.S.S.R with (at the time) manned planes. It's probably not so suprising that industries help out the military even though they sell regular products at the civilian supermarket.
I'm ashamed to admit I giggled at the thought of a seven-toed johnson.
I was in Rochester as a small boy in the 1950's, and knew about the reactor from about the age of 4 or so. As I recall, some of the cooling water drained into a small duck pond (surrounded about the fence). I was told that there was some small amount of radioactivity, although no one much was concerned at the time. At any rate, the main thing that got through my 4 year old mind was that for some reason it was not a good idea to try to climb the fence or get near the ducks. At any rate, it was generally known, and not a secret.
I was wondering if anyone selling reactors on ebay (not legal but so is selling human kidneys, which someone always post), I did find a Lionel at only $269.95 (C-9 Factory New - Brand New), http://www.ebay.com/itm/LIONEL-24294-NUCLEAR-REACTOR-/160558274893
But if you can't buy it, then gotta make it as this "fusioneer" as described in "Extreme DIY: Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10385853 (though I have doubts as the experts at Lawrence Livermore been talking for 50 years they should have in 10 years able to demonstrate electric power production from a fusion reactor.) But I guess having a fusion reactor working or not in the basement would be pretty cool.
mfwright@batnet.com
So, Iran with its 70+ million population, is sanctioned for building reactor, while in USA individual private companies. Makes sense in global media idiocracy we live in!
839*929
What I heard from an ex-kodak employee is that everyone that worked there knew something unexplained was going on in building 82, but were basically told to "ignore it and don't talk about it". He said it was thought that they were working on an inter-dimensional portal of some kind for the DOE (weapons-grade uranium is not needed for their stated purpose). You might want to look up the Philadelphia Experiment for more info. With Kodak bankrupt, it became necessary to move the equipment to a new location. Now it is probably in a non-descript warehouse in an industrial area outside a large city near a research university. If people knew about it they would be up in arms demanding that it get moved, but its location is not revealed due to "national security" reasons.
I don't know much about nuclear engineering, or the subject as a whole, so maybe somebody can jump in here and clarify.
My understanding is that "weapons grade" only refers to a degree of purity, and not to actual intent... but I still have to wonder why they chose to have a "weapons grade" reactor to begin with. What benefits are there to having this as opposed to say standard Uranium reactors?
The University of Maryland (where I graduated) has a research reactor that became higher in profile after the 9/11 attacks. Around 2005 or so ABC ran a story about it, but it was never a big secret that UMD had one. I believe MIT and other technical schools also have such reactors. In general I think they run on just regular uranium instead of the highly enriched "weapons grade".
It's kind of crazy to think that we've got Iran spending so much of their state resources trying to manufacture enriched uranium meanwhile we've got Kodak sitting on 3.5lbs of the stuff in a basement in NY doing rando-tests with it.
I just found out, after making a wrong turn and then doing a little research, that General Atomics plays with experimental nuclear and fusion reactor prototypes just a few miles down the road from our office building. I think it's really freakin' cool but I sure there would be a big hubballoo if more San Diegans knew about it.
Who really cares? This reactor was extremely small and designed to be a neutron source. These kind of things exist in LOTS of places. I knew of two research reactors on campus when I was in college. One was being jack hammered apart and the other was being used for research (the first one's replacement). One time I got to look down into the reactor pool when it was critical, cool blue glow and all.
These things are NOT dangerous beyond their obvious use as a source of material for a dirty bomb so as long as they have enough security, they can build one in my back yard...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Wikipedia lists 29 active and licensed civilian reactors; the majority of them belong to universities. Most were built in the 60's, most are General Atomics TRIGA reactors, and the power outputs range from 1 W to 10 MW. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
A few other civilian groups are licensed to have nuclear material, and of course other sectors and nations have lots of the stuff. It's really pretty common.
How many as-yet undetected meth labs pose more danger?
Mutation is responsible for the development of life. It happens regardless of man-made sources of radiation. In general, mutation will not give you a third eye or second head in a single generation. That sort of mutation is extremely unlikely.
As for other sorts of birth defects which would be more likely to be expected from random mutations, those are going to happen whether we use nuclear power or not. Again, mutation is natural and has been happening for a billion years.
We can't reasonably say that mutation driven by a very slight increase in the background radiation, which would only happen in the unlikely, but possible, case of a nuclear accident, is any more or less harmful than mutations caused by the original background radiation. The number of additional mutations/birth defects caused by that very slight increase in background radiation would be almost impossible to detect statistically. Also, there's a chance that a mutation would be *beneficial* instead of harmful - improved senses, improved health, better metabolism, better athleticism, better aging, etc.
There are small research reactors all over the place. Your local university might have one. Lots of developing countries have them. They are generally conservatively designed so that overpower is physically impossible, using something like the doppler effect on reactivity to place an upper limit on power. Big deal.
So far as I know, nobody cares about the electric plant. It's the *enrichment* plant that everyone is concerned about. With their own centrifuge, there's nothing to stop them from enriching uranium to weapons-grade (80%+) material.
If you go back and read the news more carefully, I think you'll find all the sanctions discussion revolves around the centrifuge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_University_Radiation_Science_%26_Engineering_Center
They used to give tours to science undergraduates. It was a big swimming pool and you could see the Cherenkov radiation as you watched from the top of the pool.
Very interesting!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
If they had a reactor, how did they lose out to other imaging comapies? They could have gone to them and said "Back offf - it would be a shame if anything happened to your company - like get nuked"
They probably got it on the United Nuclear web site. I'm sure there's a section under "Radioactive Isotopes" where you can get weapons grade uranium. Or maybe you actually have to call them for that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We in Oak Ridge, TN have a lovely high flux, controllable neutron source called the SNS. It uses a small pumping source, a 1 GeV proton beam linac with a peak pulse output of ~10amps aimed at a vat of liquid mercury. It's used for materials research using neutron diffraction crystallography. No Fissile materials needed, but does have ~75 MegaWatt substation as a power source
Back in its heyday you could smell Rochester on the approach by car from all the caustic chemicals Kodak used in the mass production process. If they're worried about a neutron generator used for metallurgical testing then they should be wearing a gasmask from simply living IN Rochester.
...large nuclear reactor floating in the sky.
Glow so bright that staring at it may cause blindness. Can cause skin burns. Yellow.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
in Orange County, maybe 40 miles SE of UCLA.
http://www.chem.uci.edu/~gemiller/reactor.html
I have lived 10 km from the only nuclear power plant in the Netherlands, now I live in Shanghai, guess which place is worse for my health. The only dangerous think about that reactor was the fact that when they would transport the depleted fuel rods (on the railway that came past my house at a distance of about 10 meters) I was afraid some greenpeace retards would derail the train.
This story is not yet getting any "traction". I live in Rochester and worked at Kodak for 26 years. Of course, if it shows up on 60 Minutes all is lost.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I always wondered how they got those hot colors in Kodachrome.
So there was a tiny 3kg uranium pile at Kodak Park... that'd be south and a bit west of the nuclear power plant, and more or less due north from the University's massive laser-pumped fusion reactor that generates temperatures of 200,000,000K. Somehow, I think those of us living in Rochester were already aware of the possibility of an atomic disaster. ;)
And yes, well after, my reproductive organs functioned just fine, thank you. ;)
-jim
This is a neutron source whereby emitted neutrons from u-235 get "amplified" by striking other nuclei. sure, a pot or chamber where "reactions" occur can be called a reactor. but this is not a critical configuration of U-235 such as in a nuclear power plant
Or you can do the weather from one
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/-/watch/29296424/grant-the-nuclear-pharmacist/
Reactor info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPAL
... is that there were (and likely still are) plenty of thoughtless dickheads involved who have no concept of, nor reasonable care about, consequences-to-others of what they do. And they have government and/or corporate funding to do it with.
The U.S. D.o.E. is one such organization. Have a look:
http://www.lm.doe.gov/Albany/Sites.aspx
Kodak is just using this to cover up the fact they've been experimenting with an intrinsic field test chamber. I'm assuming they want to build a super-powered meta-human to help them in their upcoming patent battles.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Tour Guide: And here we have the Neutron Flux Multiplier...
Kid in vest: Uh, does it run, like, on regular unleaded gasoline?
Tour Guide: Unfortunately, no. It requires something with a little more kick. Californium.
Kid in vest: Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?
Tour Guide: No, this sucker's electrical, but we need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity we need to make those Instamatics.
Atomics are for blowing holes in the shield wall to let big worms ride down with loads of Fremen warriors.
Or maybe Picard just uses them to heat his Earl Grey.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling