Word: plutonium
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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...would trust in God, and keep its plutonium dry. With patience and firmness it would help to build a world of order. The Russians, who had neither God nor (as yet) plutonium, would have to trust the peace-loving...
...products of the atomic bomb, the Army's civilian scientists piled up a wealth of new methods and materials useful to peace. Among the most promising: the radioactive elements from the uranium-plutonium piles at Hanford, Washington. But when U.S. industry asked the Army for more information, it got a brisk, firm "No!" One rejected applicant was W. G. Green, president of Well Surveys Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He wanted to consult "some technically qualified person" about using radioactive synthetics in the oil-well testing business. He got the brush...
Squash Court Pile. Production of plutonium was probably no more important, but vastly more dramatic. On a squash court under the stands of University of Chicago's football field, a strange apparatus took form. It was an oblate spheroid (doorknob shape), built up of graphite bricks with lumps of uranium or uranium oxide imbedded in their corners. This was the world's first chain reaction "pile"-a uranium "lattice" and a graphite "moderator." If it worked according to Dr. Fermi's theories, it would produce the first chain reaction ever set up on earth...
This momentous experiment-the very first chain reaction-marked the beginning of the Atomic Age. The pile was successful. Long before the queasy process had been reduced to an orderly procedure, a gigantic, full-sized plutonium plant had been started at Hanford on the desert near Yakima, Wash. Advantages of the unattractive site: isolation, a good supply of Grand Coulee power and the Columbia River which would carry away the enormous heat generated in the piles...
Energy & Poisons. Besides plutonium, the Hanford plant produced two frightening by-product effects. The water which cooled the piles carried off enough energy, derived from the chain reaction, to heat the Columbia River appreciably. No definite figures have been released, but the hints in Dr. Smyth's report are portentous. Some relative of the uranium pile may still prove a power source great enough to run all the world's machines...