Word: sodium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...football. It is made of "enriched uranium," i.e., uranium rich in fissionable 11-235. Around the core is a "fertile blanket" of 11-238, the spent metal that remains when U-235 is extracted from natural uranium to make atom bombs. Through both blanket and core circulates a sodium-potassium alloy that is liquid at ordinary temperatures. This coolant carries away the heat of the nuclear reaction. The fluid metal leaves the reactor at 660° F., and produces enough steam to generate 250 kw. of power...
...colleagues also took an intensive series of soda-solution baths, with striking results: "Quick disappearance of fat, especially on the stomach; the resolution of old scars, and a general increase in fitness." She did not specify whether she had used washing soda, baking soda or some other sodium compound, but the professor warned that the baths should be taken only under a doctor's direction: there was evidence that the treatment could affect the red-corpuscle count of the blood. To doubting Western biologists, the whole theory sounded like nonsense...
DIAGNOSIS: radioisotopes of iodine, sodium and potassium have already proved helpful in appraising several disorders of body chemistry, e.g., in cases of heart and kidney disease, to help establish the kind of treatment the patient can stand. Other isotopes are helpful in locating brain tumors...
...fall. Two years ago, despite surgery and X rays, Norman was wasting away with a spreading cancer of the thyroid. Then his doctor got him into the little (30-bed) hospital at Oak Ridge, Tenn., which is set aside for atomic medicine. There, Norman had an "atomic cocktail"-radioactive sodium iodide dissolved in water. The cancer colonies soaked up the iodine; from each radioactive atom, beta particles and gamma rays shot out to destroy cancerous cells. Norman goes back to Oak Ridge regularly for checkups, and sometimes he gets another radioactive drink. He eats well and has gained 30 pounds...
Atoms for Diagnosis. In the long run, atomic medicine may prove to be more important as a tool kit to help doctors in diagnosis than as a shelf of cures. Already, radio-sodium is extremely valuable as a treatment gauge in certain types of kidney disease of which children are most often the victims. It is all very well to keep these little patients, with their puffy eyes, on a diet from which salt is rigorously excluded. But doctors need to be sure that they are not going too far: if the system is really salt-starved (and hence, sodium...