>>I don't know what to say about this other than YOU HAVE A WHAT IN YOUR BASEMENT?

>>And beyond that, I'm silent...

>>

>>

Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor Loaded With Enriched Uranium Hidden In a Basement

http://gizmodo.com/5909961/kodak-had-a- ... a-basement

Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.

But why did Kodak have a hidden nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium? And how did they get permission to own it, let alone install it in a basement in the middle of a densely populated city?

Nobody really knows. Kodak officials now admit that they never made any public announcement about it. In fact, nobody in the city—officials, police or firemen—or in the state of New York or anywhere else knew about it until it was recently leaked by an ex-employee. Its existence and whereabouts were purposely kept vague and only a few engineers and Federal employees really knew about the project.

It's extremely strange that Kodak managed to get something like this. According to Miles Pomper, from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. it's "such an odd situation because private companies just don't have this material." While 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade uranium is not enough to create a nuclear bomb, illegal arm merchants are seeking small amounts like this to put them for sale in the black market—which is why the United States has such a tight control on this material. The government doesn't want Iran or al-Qaeda getting their hands all over the atomic candy for obvious reasons.

Kodak's purpose for the reactor wasn't sinister: they used it to check materials for impurities as well as neutron radiography testing. The reactor, a Californium Neutron Flux multiplier (CFX) was acquired in 1974 and loaded with three and a half pounds of enriched uranium plates placed around a californium-252 core.

The reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns.

It wasn't until 2006, well after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that it was decided to dismantle it.

All I can say is thank gawd we can trust the integrity and efficiency of atomic fairies and unicorns.

There is also the story of the teenager who built a reactor in a shed in his parents back yard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

David Charles Hahn (born October 30, 1976), also called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout", is an American who attempted to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor in 1994, at age 17. A scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police who found radioactive materials in the trunk of his car. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts of America shortly after his reactor was dismantled.[1]

While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's article by journalist Ken Silverstein. Hahn is also the eponymous subject of Silverstein's 2004 book, The Radioactive Boy Scout.

Creation of the reactor

Hahn is an Eagle Scout who received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and spent years tinkering with basement chemistry which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (as neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased[2] batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[1]

Hahn posed as an adult scientist or professor to gain the trust of many professionals in letters, despite the presence of misspellings and obvious errors in his letters to them. Hahn ultimately hoped to create a breeder reactor, using low-level isotopes to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissionable isotopes.[3]

Although his homemade reactor never achieved critical mass, it ended up emitting dangerous levels of radioactivity, likely well over 1,000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On June 26, 1995 the United States Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property as a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.[2]

Transward

Many colleges have/had nuclear reactors. They used them for projects ranging

from training engineers to making marked chamicals to physics research.

U. of Chicago had the first one. U of Texas has one in north Austin. I suspect

many big state colleges have them. Many have had "nuclear accidents", not

explosions but lots of radioactive plumbing from dumping stuff down the sink.

At one time it was a lot easier to get any required permission. It's only since

Homeland has showed up with too little to do that it has become a big deal.

When I was in H.S. I wrote off to D.C. and got a letter permitting me to buy

U, too bad I didn't know Hahn. But, I couldn't afford to buy enough to get into

trouble.

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 12:19 pm The reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns.

I looked up, what the thing was. And basically I would not call it a power generating reactor. It was basically a neutron source.

PS. I'd b

transward (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 1:57 pm e more worried about other sources (see

David Hahn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn), or more recent local story, about the kid, who experimented with x-ray tubes, at home, in appartment building, without protection. He got big enough dose to get burns on one hand).

Kodak's was at least guarded and operated properly.

What I found most startling is that this was not listed in the local fire or emergency offices.

I know from working at a laboratory that we had to have inventories of every cabinet with chemicals. We not only posted the lists on the doors to each laboratory but kept it online and gave a copy of that to the fire companies and police who would respond to emergencies.

If Building 83 had a fire on the second floor, then firemen knew before the arrived what might be involved.

Remember that portion of Murphy's Law that says "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong?"

One time, we had an asbestos abatement going on in my building. For those who've never seen that, everything is covered in plastic sheeting so when they touch, cut and remove the asbestos none of the fibers can escape. It is a mass of plastic sheeting and tape that can hold men inside. Whole rooms got covered. These "rooms" of plastic get air sucked out of them so that way asbestos fibers stay inside the plastic

Well, one weekend after the abatement started on the second floor, one of the air pumps that keeps the inside of the plastic under a low pressure decided to overheat and smoke and then try to burn out.

Our safety people had to physically intercept the firemen so they wouldn't break open the asbestos containment and release asbestos fibers or breath them. There was a full minute of firemen and safety man screaming at each other before they all figured it all out.

Turning the power off to the floor stopped the air pump from smoking and trying to burn up and that put out the fire before the plastic burned.

So the moral is, I'm surprised that no one seemed to know about Kodak's reactor. Especially firemen who might have reason to respond to a fire there... And we all should be happy for violations of Murphy's Law.

...

Sweetpickle (imported) wrote: Tue May 15, 2012 2:17 pm Many have had "nuclear accidents", not

explosions but lots of radioactive plumbing from dumping stuff down the sink.

...

You're not supposed to dump waste chemicals down a sink. shame, shame,

My Brother worked at a university nuclear lab that produced "tracer" chemicals for student experiments and other things, when they moved from one building to another, a sledge of one ton of lead bricks slipped off the flatbed truck. It embedded and edge of itself six inches into the asphalt after crushing a parked car's bumper.

The police report was "unusual" to say the least.

A ton of lead is only about 1 foot by 1 foot by 36 inches. Not a very big pallet to see but requires a forklift to pick up.

The lead bricks were 2 inches by 3 inches by 6 inches and I think they stacked them two high (4 inches) and 36 inches square on the pallet.

That makes sense to load pallets on a truck.

There is probably quite a lot of heavily radioactive material floating around in the U.S.. A high school friend had a small room in his basement with all sorts of mysterious containers in it. One of them was a wooden box containing a metal box inside of that was a lead cylinder. The outer box was stenciled with "Danger Radioactive do not open without taking precautions." He was afraid to open it. He who burned through the basement floor with Magnesium and destroyed the neighbor's bathroom with a homemade rocket. The stuff in the small room was left there by his older brother who was a chemistry and physics researcher in Chicago. My friend went on to study pharmacology. Interesting people, but a little out of my league. --FLO--

I suppose the biggest "nuclear disaster" in the U.S. was that factory that made radium watch dials.

The workers were in the habbit of licking their paint brushes to get a better tip, many of them died.

When they tore down the building they gave the lumber away to anyone who wanted it, so it ended

up in houses and buildings all over the county.

Then there was the cobalt assembly that some Mexican guys stole and sold to a U.S. plant that manufactured

re-bar. No one knows where that went.

There's been several accidents.

In the late 30's early 40's the University of Chicago had a small reactor that went critical and irradiated parts of the university there.

There were two men who walked into the target room of a nuclear accelerator near here and survived with various limbs amputated to reduce the radioactivity in his bones. That was about 45 years ago and wasn't publicized. My brother met one of the guys in the rehabilitation room after he had a bone tumor removed from his thigh bone.

I remember the news story about the metal bases of restaurant tables that were made with some radioactive metal and had to be rounded p and taken away.

I know professors who worked at Penn State and were called in to help with Three Mile Island. They were the ones that told us the reactor melted and a new and unknown ceramic formed at the base of the reactor containment. It didn't burn through and sink to the center of the earth or come out at China. Sorry, that doesn't happen. Shit like this scares me. I saw and heard the same lies again in Japan last year.

Chernobyl just is beyond frightful. Several of the men who sealed that reactor knew they would be overexposed with deadly radiation and they did it because it had to be done.

Apparently, updates to the KODAK story tell us that it was decommissioned in 2007 and disposed of properly. Plus it operated within the rules of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and never had an incident or failure. Good for Kodak.