<p>"That’s not true (unless something’s changed). "</p>
<p>Very prescient of me to start my comments thusly, because evidently something has in fact changed.</p>
<p>From a very entertaining blog, under the title “Buildings No One Really Cares About”:</p>
<p>"Since someone asked about it, I decided to make a trip out to Ward Labs on the southern edge of the campus and the engineering quad. Ward Labs, or more properly the Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences, was completed in 1963. At this time, nuclear engineering was experiencing great interest. But after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the nation experienced a serious decline in interest in nuclear studies, and the engineering school disbanded it’s Nuclear Science and Engineering program in 1995 [1]. On May 4, 2001, Cornell announced that it would decomission the TRIGA Mark II nuclear reactor inside the facility, due to underutilization and unwanted liability concerning the handling, use and transport of nuclear materials. The reactor was a 500 kilowatt facility used strictly for research and teaching. A dry irradiation facility that uses the radioactive Cobalt-60 was recommended to be maintained at the facility. The building still contained radioactive waste, so when 9/11 happened, road blocks were installed around the facility [2].</p>
<p>Then we fast forward to October 2008. There was a very interesting article written by Munier Salem for the Daily Sun highlighting the increased interest in building new facilties and a revived interest in the field as the energy crisis affected the nation, and how some view the decomissioning as a huge mistake.</p>
<p>Today, with the exception of some offices and little-used labs, the Ward Center is largely abandoned. The building is slated to be torn down under the master plan (assuming our endowment holds out)."</p>
<p>Someone interested in nuclear at Cornell today might try to talk about it with Prof. K Bingham Cady, to see what can or cannot still be done there. But to me it doesn’t look very promising. This is a significant change.</p>