Word: cesium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Even more exciting is the possibility of using the MHD system with a nuclear reactor. In this case the gas will probably be argon or helium, laced with cesium to make it more conductive. It will circulate through the reactor, then through the generator and back to the reactor again. This system will have to wait for the development of high-temperature reactor cores, but Project Rover, the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear-rocket program, has shown that the prospects of this are promising...
Almost daily, ways are found to give bigger radiation doses more safely to hard-to-reach parts of the body. Examples: cobalt-60 "bombs," a new cesium-137 unit at M. D. Anderson Hospital, higher-powered X-ray machines and linear-particle accelerators, ingeniously refined ways of implanting radioisotopes such as iridium 192 and yttrium 90 in tumors...
...Alamos' plasma thermocouple, the solid metals of a bimetallic thermocouple are replaced by a tiny (finch long) rod of uranium suspended inside a vacuum-sealed can that contains liquid cesium. The uranium is enriched with U-235. Around the cesium is a circulating coolant (see diagram). When the device is lowered inside a reactor, the uranium is bombarded by the neutrons generated by the reactor, causing the U-235 to fission and give off intense heat...
Under vacuum, cesium turns partly to gas. As the uranium heats up. it ionizes the cesium gas to a plasma of charged particles (electrons wrenched from their atoms). As in conventional thermocouples, there is a flow of electric current between hot and cold: from the hot (2,000° C.) junction of the uranium and ionized cesium to the cold (300° C.) junction of the cesium and the oil coolant...
After twelve hours, the device had to be shut down because the uranium fission produces gas as a byproduct that dilutes the plasma and dangerously raises the pressure inside the can. In future plasma thermocouples, this can be solved by bleeding off the gas. But the cesium plasma proved to have a thermoelectric efficiency much higher than any combination of solid metals...