Word: reactors
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...sources are made by "cooking" cobalt or tantalum tubes (13½ in. long) in Brookhaven's nuclear reactor at Upton, N.Y. There the original metals turn into cobalt-60 and tantalum-182, both of which emit gamma rays with more than 1,000,000 electron volts of energy...
...Canada's Chalk River atomic center, Pontecorvo helped design the heavy-water pile, still the "reactor of most advanced design and performance." He knew the secrets of the plutonium-producing piles at Hanford. After the war, he was a senior officer at Harwell, the British atomic research center. Pontecorvo, whose brother and sister were lifelong Communists, might have been betraying reactor data from 1943 on, the committee guessed. He was rated by some colleagues as an even abler scientist than Fuchs. After Fuchs, said the committee, "Pontecorvo may be plausibly rated as the second deadliest betrayer . . . Certain...
...Cheese & Fruit. When plutonium is made from uranium in a nuclear reactor, the U-235 that is sacrificed splits into other elements of lesser atomic weight. Most of these are fiercely radioactive, and they must be disposed of before the plutonium can be used for atomic bombs. The chemical separation process, accomplished by remote control from behind thick shields, results in a crude mixture of fission products and nonradioactive chemicals. Radioactivity of the mixture varies, but may be as high as 1,000 curies* per lb.-about twice as active as radium, the smallest visible speck of which is dangerous...
...data released will not be up to date. The newest reactor to be described in detail is HYPO (for High Power), the Los Alamos "Water Boiler" which went into operation in December 1944. A lot of uranium has fissioned since then. In the guarded centers of the AEC's "technical areas" are more advanced reactors. But HYPO is effective enough, comparatively cheap and simple...
...essential part is a spherical stainless steel tank one foot in diameter. Inside is a water solution of uranyl nitrate which contains 1.9 lb. of fissionable U-235. Water running through a coiled tube keeps the reactor cool, and another tube piercing the sphere gives access to its interior. One big advantage of HYPO is that it is self-regulating. If the chain reaction gets going too fast, the solution heats up and expands, reducing its density and therefore its reactivity. So the reaction slows down automatically until the solution has cooled off. This built-in stability makes HYPO...