Word: bismuth
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...paper but turn out to be impractical in actual use. In its effort to develop low-cost nuclear power, the Atomic Energy Commission has long experimented at such places as Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, with new liquid reactor fuels-a low-melting alloy of U-233 and bismuth, a solution of uranyl sulfate, and others. But AEC soon discovered that the program was leading only to prohibitively expensive means of obtaining competitive electrical energy, and last week it announced a shift in emphasis: funds for the Brookhaven liquid-fuel project and similar ones elsewhere have been largely diverted...
SNAP III was developed under a modest $15,000 AEC contract with the Martin Co. of Baltimore working in conjunction with the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. But the polonium, which is made by radiating bismuth in an atomic pile, costs about $10 per curie. SNAP's charge is the equivalent of 3,000 curies, bringing the price of fuel in the capsule to $30,000. An AEC official explained that some cheaper isotope might later be substituted for polonium. If cerium 144 can be used, the unit cost might be as low as $600 per battery...
...water and food, doctors indict other villains, including the oil used in cooking, hot seasonings, even climate, altitude and just plain overeating. Mexicans, among whom dysentery is endemic, use such home-grown remedies as guava juice and seeds, guava-leaf tea, cactus pear seeds. Medically more accepted remedies: bismuth and paregoric, or in well-diagnosed cases under a doctor's care, the newer antibiotics. Currently popular is a new nonprescription tablet made by Ciba Pharmaceuticals called Entero-Vioform (an antiseptic containing iodine). A lot of these treatments, Mexicans hope, may become unnecessary as a result of the chemical warfare...
...REACTORS. British, Dutch and U.S. scientists spelled out almost to "do-it-yourself" simplicity the operations of their most advanced reactor designs. Chief among them: AEC's Brookhaven liquid-metal fuel reactor, powered by circulating molten solution of uranium in bismuth, in a "blanket" of thorium-bismuth compound (Th 3 Bi 5 ). The thorium breeds U-233, which is recycled as fuel, making fuel costs "negligible...
...Middle Ages, silver miners sickened and died of it. In the last century, cobalt and bismuth miners caught it. In the 1920s, the German government awarded compensation to the Schneeberg miners, and forbade them to work there more than two years in a row. Until the Reds took over, Schneeberger Krankheit affected only a score or so of miners a year. In the atomic age, the true nature of the illness has been revealed...