Word: radiumator
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Neutron Source. Another interesting detail was vaguely described by Greenglass. In the center of the bomb, he said, was a beryllium sphere that provided a source of neutrons to make the plutonium explode more suddenly. He may have had in mind a mixture of beryllium and radium, the usual laboratory source of small numbers of neutrons. When bombarded by alpha-particles from radium, beryllium releases neutrons and turns into ordinary carbon. But he may have been right in saying that the central sphere was made of, pure beryllium. Plutonium itself emits alpha-particles, which might knock useful neutrons...
...treatment of cancer, technical men have devised huge and intricate electrical X-ray machines, but few have been able to approximate the pure, short gamma ray of earthborn radium. The trouble with radium is that there is not very much...
Last week energetic Dr. Douglas Quick, consulting radiologist and cancer specialist at Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital, had a triumph to announce for his hospital. The Belgian Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which controls most of the world's limited supply of radium, had promised the hospital a five-year loan of the biggest chunk of radium (50 grams-about 1/10 lb.)* ever amassed. Estimated value...
Before Radiologist Quick can use the prize, Roosevelt will have to build a machine to handle it. Plans, already drawn by Physicist Gioacchino Failla, call for a derrick-like supporting apparatus in an underground chamber and a 3½-ton bucket of lead, mercury and steel to hold the radium and direct its energy in converging rays on deep-seated cancers. When the machine is finished some time next year, the hospital will ship the empty bucket to Belgium and have it loaded. Then the radium will be brought back to Manhattan and put to work...
...didn't look too different from the game that started in the Radium three hours later...