Cornell had one too and the decision to close the reactor was made in 2001 but not shut down iirc till 2003 or 2003
Posted on 05/14/2012 5:14:36 PM PDT by dynachrome
A Kodak industrial facility in New York, was home to a secret nuclear reactor containing weapons-grade uranium.
The research reactor was housed in an underground labyrinth in one of the buildings at the former Kodak Park site in Rochester and was the size of a fridge.
Kodak used it to check chemicals and other materials for impurities, as well
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I have always believed some companies should have First Strike capability (and certainly the new Freedom Tower should).
I had a friend who worked at Kodak Park around 40 years ago. He was telling me how they built a swimming pool around the 6th floor of a building with a stainless tank. It was completed with diving board, ladders. The engineers made a last minute inspection before it was to be filled and prepared for use. They advised against ever filling the pool because the building would come down within hours. A couple years later they made the pool room a dark room where they developed wall size mural photographs.
I believe the first reactor built was in the basement of a sports building at a university.
The first man made nuclear reactor was called the Chicago Pile-1 at the University of Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
Eh, there was one for research in Robeson Hall at Va Tech. I’m sure it’s gone now.
There was one in Windsor Connecticut easily accessible on a dirt road. The S1C reactor was a prototype naval reactor designed for the United States Navy to provide electricity generation and propulsion on warships.
The nuclear reactor was built in Windsor, Connecticut as a prototype for the experimental USS Tullibee (SSN-597) submarine, though that boat was in fact powered by a S2C reactor. The propulsion plant was unusual in that the steam turbines powered an electric motor, rather than a set of reduction gears. The USS Tullibee was an early advanced-design, fast-attack submarine constructed by Electric Boat and commissioned in 1960.
There was a simple gate that kept out traffic and, I imagine some surveillance but as kids we often drove down the road pretty close and never got challenged.
Yep. You can actually go to the area where they buried some parts of it in a Cook County Forest Preserve southwest of Chicago.
Cornell had one too and the decision to close the reactor was made in 2001 but not shut down iirc till 2003 or 2003
Looking back on it, maybe we would all be better of if old Enrico’s math skills weren’t quite that sharp.
There is one (forgivable) error in the article that I noticed: They show a picture of the Kodak office complex/Kodak Tower and caption it:
“Kodak’s headquarters in New York where the secret reactor is alleged to have been located”
#1) Yes it is New York, but people “not from around here” might think they mean NY City. It is in Rochester which is a couple hundred miles away from NYC.
#2) It is NOT where this reactor was located. Kodak Park is a few miles north of Kodak offices.
As an aside: Kodak park was huge and nearly fully self contained: They had their own fire dept, their own sewage treatment plant, their own savings bank for employees, they even had the ability to generate most or all of their own electricity. I think they may have even had their own railroad lines within the park at one time. It was truly an amazing place at one time.
Sure is sad to see what it has become.
Weapons designer Ted Taylor was worried about such sites being targeted by terrorists seeking fissile material. John McPhee covered it in “The Curve of Binding Energy” back about 1973. In the book Taylor used the newly completed WTC as an example of a potential target for attack and how clean a yield you would need to bring them down....
University of Chicago. My daughters room there overlooked
the monument on the site of the first atomic pile. This is
also (according to legend) where the term SCRAM came from.
The control rods were suspended so that they would drop to
quench the reaction and held by a rope. An ax was handy to
chop the rope. SCRAM meant “Safety Cut Rope Axe Man” or
something like that.
You’re right about the monument. It’s butt ugly.
They're everywhere!
“Chicago Pile-1 at the University of Chicago.”
Chicago Pile-2 is in the White House!
A important part of the Manhattan Project was done under Dr Frank Spedding at Iowa State.
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