Historic operation · reviewed September 28, 2026
Carborundum Buffalo Avenue — Nuclear Fuel Research
NIOSH locates the 1959–1967 uranium and plutonium fuel work in Buffalo Avenue Building 1, separate from the Hyde Park Boulevard Globar plant.
The research building and two operational periods
Building 1 opened in 1953, with four stories and more than 60,000 square feet. Its fourth-floor Central Laboratory housed a ventilated plutonium facility with six gloveboxes. This was experimental nuclear-fuel work; the facility description does not establish an off-site release.
The location of Carborundum’s smaller 1943 uranium-grinding experiment remains unresolved between Buffalo Avenue and Globar. The 2026 presentation also distinguishes the covered 1959–1967 period from broader Building 1 work dates of 1957–1968.
NIOSH June 2026 presentation, slides 8–13 ↗ · 2020 site profile ↗
The decontamination record
The November 2017 HHS determination states that NIOSH did not find evidence of decontamination after the atomic-weapons-employer operational periods, and therefore evaluated residual exposure periods. This is a records finding, not proof that no cleanup occurred or that contamination exists today.
HHS declined to add the petitioned employee class to the Special Exposure Cohort because doses could be reconstructed with sufficient accuracy. That compensation decision is not environmental clearance; qualifying claims could still proceed through dose reconstruction.
HHS determination, sections IV–V ↗Nash Road: company named, material unresolved
DEC names Carborundum among multiple users of Niagara Sanitation / Nash Road Landfill. Its notice does not identify Building 1 as the origin or establish uranium/plutonium waste disposal.
DEC’s 2015 landfill notice ↗Records still needed
- Verify Building 1’s footprint against campus plans before assigning coordinates. Nearby historical survey anomalies are not a Building 1 location or source attribution.
- Check the proposed 1993 demolition-film lead against permits, building numbers, pre-demolition surveys, release documents and disposal manifests.
- Recover 1943 work orders and later fuel-program material and waste ledgers.
- Research Building 82 (DEC 932048B), the Walmore Road abrasives landfill (932007) and Globar (932036) separately; common ownership does not establish a common radioactive-waste stream.
No precise Building 1 map pin is assigned while the footprint remains unverified.
Related histories
Globar’s solvent cleanup is a distinct property record. Bethlehem Steel and Bliss & Laughlin document parallel regional uranium operations; these links assert no shipments between them and Carborundum.