[pissmanvd]

May 17, 2012, 07.02AM IST



NEW YORK: The company that gave us the Instamatic has acknowledged that for 30 years it operated a small nuclear
reactor in a basement on its corporate campus in Rochester, New York, unbeknown to almost everyone save a few
scientists and engineers. Kodak, which began operating the device, called a californium neutron flux multiplier (CFX),
in 1974, insists there was nothing unsafe about it.

None the less, it came preloaded with nearly 1.5kg of uranium enriched up to a level of 93.4%, which is just about right
for an atomic warhead. The size of a fridge, the device was kept in a basement behind 2ft-thick concrete walls and was
operated remotely. While Kodak apparently did not deliberately seek to keep its existence a secret - it claims it was
mentioned at least twice in published company research - it did not exactly advertise it either . Seemingly neither the
authorities in Rochester nor state-wide knew it was there.

The company finally "decommissioned" its in-house reactor under federal government supervision in 2007 and the uranium
was sent to California . For more than three decades it had been used by a tiny cadre of staff to help test chemicals for
impurities and perform neutron radiography , a form of imaging. Experts say that Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy this year,
had one of only two CFX reactors ever made. The other belonged to the US department of energy.