Word: gamma
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Climax acted fast. It flew one of its top uranium geologists out to Nowata, and hired a fleet of "gamma" trucks to scout the area. Reported Climax: some of its oilwell filters were indeed radioactive. But on the basis of its gamma reports and the general geology of the Nowata area, the company did not believe that there was any uranium lode on its land. It speculated that the uranium, spread throughout the oilfields in small quantities in the rock, was leached out by the water and deposited in the filters...
...kept in a well in the floor of a heavily shielded chamber. To put it to work, the scientists will first clear out of the chamber. Then, watching through a lead-glass window 3 ft. thick, they will lift it with remotely controlled "hands" and set it where its gamma rays can strike through mixtures of chemicals...
Standard Oil's scientists are primarily interested in oil refining. They hope that gamma rays will do the job of high pressure, high temperature and conventional catalysts-all of which are expensive. But "radiation catalysis" has possibilities far beyond oil refining. It can cause "polymerization"; i.e., join molecules of a liquid into solid, plasticlike substances. By making a reaction proceed at low temperature, it can produce valuable compounds that would be destroyed by the heat of an ordinary chemical reaction...
Soothing statements during that period of atomic innocence were reasonably accurate. Careful study showed that except in special cases (e.g., an A-bomb exploding in a harbor and drenching a city with "hot" spray) there was little to fear from radioactivity. The bomb's initial burst of gamma rays affected few people. If the bomb exploded high in the air (the approved position), its radioactive fission products were carried aloft and dissipated in the upper atmosphere. When they sifted down thousands of miles away, they could be detected by sensitive instruments, but their activity was far too weak...
...also expects to use the virus to analyze the potency of gamma globulin...