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 it was safe.
Nonetheless, it came pre-loaded with nearly 1.5kg of uranium enriched up to a level of 93.4 per cent, which is just about right for an atomic warhead. The size of a fridge, the device was kept in a basement behind 0.5m-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.
"It's such an odd situation because private companies just don't have this material," Miles Pomper, a senior research associate at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington DC, told the Democrat and Chronicle, the Rochester newspaper which carried the first report about the reactor.
