[johnminter]

My employer (Eastman Kodak) had one of the few industrial research reactors built for neutron activation analysis (NAA) from 1974 to 2007. NAA provided great trace analysis of impurities that caused problems with photographic film and solid state devices. The reactor was located in the basement of the research labs, next to my electron microscopy lab. I spent close to 20 years next door to this.

There were two main issues that caused the company to decommission the reactor. 1) replacement of the californium source would have been prohibitively expensive. 2) Because the neutron source also contained isotopes that could have been weaponized (with great difficulty,) we had to maintain 24x7 security - at great expense. The press reported on the removal (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/kodak-nuclear-react...)

During my tenure as "next door neighbor" to this, I was more concerned about falling on ice in the parking lot during the winter than any concerns from the reactor. The staff in the NAA lab were well-trained scientists who were quite careful and they monitored constantly for activity.