Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week the AEC's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory announced a major step toward direct conversion: an experimental "plasma thermocouple" no bigger than a can of frozen orange juice. Placed inside the core of a research reactor, the device produced 40 watts of electricity -enough to light a household light bulb...
...solid metals of a bimetallic thermocouple are replaced by a tiny (finch long) rod of uranium suspended inside a vacuum-sealed can that contains liquid cesium. The uranium is enriched with U-235. Around the cesium is a circulating coolant (see diagram). When the device is lowered inside a reactor, the uranium is bombarded by the neutrons generated by the reactor, causing the U-235 to fission and give off intense heat...
...atoms all neat round shapes, as shown in the classroom diagrams? Physicist Arthur J. Freeman of the Watertown (Mass.) Arsenal thinks not. Last week, at the American Physical Society meeting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he presented evidence from recent experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where billions of reactor-bred neutrons were fired at atoms of magnetic iron, nickel and cobalt. According to Dr. Freeman's mathematical analysis, the neutrons bounced off the atoms' electrons in patterns that indicate that the atoms have varying shapes. The nuclei of iron atoms are surrounded by a cloud of electrons...
...achieved an estimated 10% efficiency. Compared to the 40% efficiency of the biggest electric generators now in operation, this is not sensational. But future development may close the gap, make possible efficient direct generation of electricity from a coal fire, nuclear reactor or other heat source...
...success in getting around the antibody reaction-at least for the time being-was reported by France's Dr. Henri Jammet to the United Nations in Manhattan. His subjects were six atomic scientists (five men and a woman) who had been exposed to normally fatal radiation in a reactor accident at Vinca, Yugoslavia's equivalent of Oak Ridge. The patients were flown to Paris, lodged in the Hopital Curie. The mildest case, estimated to have absorbed 400 r., got better with conventional treatment-blood transfusions, special diet, rigorous protection against infection. The other five, nauseated and vomiting, soon...