Eleven years after UB's nuclear reactor shut down for good, New York State is investing millions of dollars to clean up hazardous materials at the site.
The university has held a license to possess and secure the nuclear material at the South Campus facility since it closed down in 1994, according to David Vasbinder, director of the Buffalo Materials Research Center.
"There was not a great deal of on-campus use of the facility," Vasbinder said. "(The facility) is not cost-effective and is more costly to run than is probably worth."
But to clean out the facility for another use, the national Nuclear Regulatory Commission mandates a long and costly process.
"We're estimating the cost to be in the neighborhood of $5 to $10 million," Vasbinder said. "Because this is a state-run facility, the funding will come somewhere from the state of New York over the next two to three years."
The facility was built in the early 1970's and was used primarily for medical research, Vasbinder said.
Officials did not release their future plans for the site, but said that the site will be safe after the cleanup.
"It's going into a process called decommissioning," Vasbinder said. "(Decommissioning) is an NRC-driven process which requires us to remove and clean all the radioactive material from the facility so that it can be used for any purpose after that."
Under the commission's regulations, some of the process has to be kept secret to the public because of security concerns.
"Due to the NRC, we cannot disclose our exact process," Vasbinder said. "But we took a lot of physical security measures and went through many regulatory processes. The UB police department also works regularly with the facility in maintaining the proper level of security."
According to Vasbinder, even the exact location of the facility cannot be publicly disclosed due to information restrictions put in place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But a quick search on the university Web site shows the research center is located on South Campus between Clark Hall and Acheson Hall.
"Even though people can find it, we don't want to publicly disclose the location and make it obvious," he said. "Still, it would be pretty hard for anyone to do much with it, considering the small amount of radioactive material. It's a research reactor, much smaller than a regular nuclear reactor."
Vasbinder also dispelled the idea that the facility is now being scheduled for decommissioning because chemicals are leaking.
"There have been two points in its history where there was a leak of mildly radioactive water, " Vasbinder said. "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviewed the incidents and in both cases the leaks were not major enough to actually shut down the facility. There was no exposure or health threat to the public or workers."
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
