Kodak nuclear reactor in basement!

[munz6869]

Well, this is all a bit odd: http://gizmodo.com/5909961/kodak-had-a-secret-weapons+grade-nuclear-reactor-hidden-in-a-basement

Marc!

 

[LJH]

You sure that it wasn't just a forgotten box of Aero Ektars?

 

[brucemuir]

bizarre.
In a basement lol

hey ma have you seen my skis???

over there Junior behind the uranium recycle bin

 

[Peter de Groot]

Cool. Buy our products or we start a war! They could have!

 

[RattyMouse]

PE, you got some 'splaining to do!!

 

[zsas]

PE take the 5th!!!

 

[removed account4]

irradiation ... and uranium toners ...

 

[mike c]

irradiation ... and uranium toners ...

Makes for glowing hi lights in prints.

Mike

 

[F/1.4]

LOL I love the comment "momma don't take my californium-252 away"

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I wonder how many other big powerful corporations have crazy secrets like this?

 

[Worker 11811]

The first sustained nuclear reaction was created in a basement under the stands of the football field at the University of Chicago in 1942.
Nobody outside the Manhattan Project even knew it was there until after the war.

MIT still has an operational nuclear reactor, parked in the middle of Downtown Cambridge. I think it uses the same type of fuel that the Kodak reactor does/did. 90% of the people in town walk right by that reactor every day but don't even know what it is. The folks at MIT are somewhat quiet about the fact that there is a reactor sitting in the middle of their campus but if you ask them about it, you'll probably get a nonchalant, "Yeah, it's over there," as the person points it out.

So, it's interesting to know that Kodak has/had a reactor but it's not surprising if you think about it. I don't see what everybody's getting their knickers in a twist about.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

<snip>I don't see what everybody's getting their knickers in a twist about.

:confused:

 

[Helinophoto]

It was used to produce awesome photo engineers, duh!

True story.

 

[Brian C. Miller]

Wikipedia:

The Atomic Energy Commission sold californium-252 to industrial and academic customers in the early 1970s for $10 per microgram ...

So, $1.6M for the reactor? Sounds like pocket change to me.

 

[bobwysiwyg]

I suspect many exist, or existed. The University of Michigan had an operational nuclear reactor until 2003 here in Ann Arbor.

 

[RattyMouse]

So, it's interesting to know that Kodak has/had a reactor but it's not surprising if you think about it. I don't see what everybody's getting their knickers in a twist about.

Google Fukishima......it will come to you.

 

[andrew.roos]

Google Fukishima......it will come to you.

According to http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2011/03/rom-calculation-of-total-uranium.html Fukushima consumed 570 tons of uranium every year. A TEPCO audit at http://criepi.denken.or.jp/result/event/seminar/2010/issf/pdf/6-1_powerpoint.pdf showed that 1760 tons of spent fuel was stored on site. 3.5 pounds in a research reactor, whilst concerning, is a qualitatively different proposition.

Also, the reactor type suggests that it was subcritical - i.e. not enough nuclear material to sustain a chain reaction, so no danger of runaway as happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Instead, it used the natural decay of Californium to trigger a subcritical chain reaction in the Uranium to increase the number of neutrons produced. [Edit] This is confirmed by the decomissioning plan found on the web, which states:

"The CFX was a sub-critical assembly of uranium-235 surrounding a Cf-252 source.
The function of the U-235 fuel was to multiply the neutrons coming from the Cf-252
source, which fissions spontaneously. The CFX was designed never to exceed a Keif of
0.99. The CFX assembly yielded sufficient neutron fluxes for applications such as
neutron activation analysis."

 

[andrew.roos]

I had to shut mine down to make space for my darkroom.
On the plus side, the residual background gives great Sabatier effect.

 

[Tim Gray]

A number of universities have research reactors. Reed College has one too - they let undergrads run it

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Dead Link Removed
By Steve Orr, Staff Writer, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.com, May 11, 2012

Photo included.

Ken

 

[Moopheus]

MIT still has an operational nuclear reactor, parked in the middle of Downtown Cambridge. I think it uses the same type of fuel that the Kodak reactor does/did. 90% of the people in town walk right by that reactor every day but don't even know what it is. The folks at MIT are somewhat quiet about the fact that there is a reactor sitting in the middle of their campus but if you ask them about it, you'll probably get a nonchalant, "Yeah, it's over there," as the person points it out.

Technically, it's in Kendall Sq., so not really "Downtown," to the extent that Cambridge actually has a "downtown". Every now and then, they'll offer a public tour of the reactor, but I have yet to be able to score a ticket--they're very limited, and are all taken within hours of availability. And during lat year's open house, due to my own bad planning, I missed out on a tour of the fusion research lab.

Given that my entire neighborhood is surrounded by biotech research labs, MIT's reactor is not high on my list of worries.

I'd be really surprised if the fuel was really "weapons grade." Technically, I suppose, any "highly-enriched uranium" could be fashioned into a bomb, but I'd guess what they had was way below what is usually used in bombs.

 

[ic-racer]

It is journalistic sensationalism to me. I don't see how a "Nuclear Reactor" can operate on subcritical mass. The device in question is a "Californium Multiplier" which is a unique and rare instrument containing a subcritical mass of uranium used to produce a neutron beam for research.

It looks like it is a clever alternative to a particle accelerator.

 

[zsas]

LOL I love the comment "momma don't take my californium-252 away"

*conspiracy theory*
- Kodak dismantles the nuclear reactor in 2007
- Kodak ceases production of Kodachrome in 2009

How long does a batch of that secret Kodachrome dye last PE? 2 years or so? I expect no response....

 

[Tim Gray]

I'd be really surprised if the fuel was really "weapons grade." Technically, I suppose, any "highly-enriched uranium" could be fashioned into a bomb, but I'd guess what they had was way below what is usually used in bombs.

I think they do actually have highly enriched uranium at the MIT reactor. As in weapons grade. The little info I could find on it stated 93% enriched, which is pretty darn high.

Also, if you want to get a tour of the MIT fusion lab, better try hard this year. It's unclear whether it is going to enough funding to continue.

 

[Neanderman]

Kodak, via it's Tennessee Eastman subsidiary, played a key role in the Manhattan Project, providing women to operate one of the enrichment systems at Oak Ridge. So it doesn't surprise me that they would have been 'trusted' with the neutron device in Kodak Park. The fact that almost no one knew it was there just shows that the trust was not misplaced.

Ed