Camera giant Eastman Kodak kept a rather disturbing secret for over thirty years: the company had a fully-functioning nuclear reactor at its headquarters in the middle of busy Rochester, New York.
Until 2007, the company stored 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade uranium in a refrigerator-sized nuclear reactor in the basement of its Kodak Park site. Housed inside a concrete bunker two feet thick, the reactor was ostensibly used for imaging and to detect impurities in supplies for the film company.
The highly-enriched uranium, the same material used to make nuclear weapons, was removed in November 2007 in protective containers, the report said. It is believed the company obtained the uranium in 1974. Kodak has stated that no employees of the company had access to the reactor, prompting many journalists to ask "who did operate the facility"?
Kodak insists that the company only constructed the device to carry out research into neutrons -- subatomic particles that can create an image of a material without damaging it.
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