Nexus - 0402 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Was one kilogram of heavy water and were mere hundreds of Here was done all the preparatory work moving toward the pounds of uranium chemicals too insignificant for important use? eventual creation of the first man-made elements in history: nep- Specialists agree that the quantities delivered were inadequate tunium-93 and plutonium-94. From the group's creative imagina- for producing one A-bomb or even one experimental pile. They tion rose in time the vast plutonium plant at Hanford, Washington, point out, however, that scarcely any fraction of a substance can _and, in a large sense, America's atom bomb itself. The materials be too small for laboratory research. The head of a pin could not of that triumph were not 17 but 10 tons of uranium compounds. have been formed with the first plutonium ever made. From 500 One of my lucky experiences was that of chancing upon the micrograms were determined most of the properties and the February 27, 1950 issue of the magazine, Life, shortly before my chemical behavior of an element which 18 months earlier had second appearance before the Un-American Activities been entirely unknown. Committee. I bore the copy with me to the witness chair. It con- On the presumption that 1,465 pounds of uranium salts were tained an illustrated article on the atom bomb. I learned for the contributed to the Soviet Union, metallurgists estimate that they first time that a plutonium pile consists of giant blocks of were reducible in theory to 875 pounds of natural uranium, which graphite, surrounded by heavy walls of concrete and honey- in turn would yield 6.25 pounds of fissionable U-235. But 4.4 combed with aluminum tubes. In these tubes, it was related, are pounds of the latter, or nearly two inserted slugs of natural uranium, con- pounds less, are capable of produc- taining one per cent of U-235. The ing an atomic explosion. Authority Almost as curious was the discovery intensity of the operation was for this assertion may be found in . . declared to be governed by means of the celebrated report which Dr that we shipped to Russia more than cadmium rods. University wrote athe request ot | __ 12 tons of thorium salts and tubes~where had T met these words General Groves and published in compounds. Two other elements before? In the Russian lists of Lend- 1945. alone, besides uranium and Lease figures which I had added to The Shattuck and Eldorado pur- | . fissi | the Jordan diary. Re-examining those chases totaled 1,420 pounds. With p utonium, are fissionable. pages, I discovered that during the their third requisition, the Russians They are protoactinium and thorium four-year period 1942-45 we con- expected so confidently to acquire tributed to the Soviet Union 3,692 another 500 pounds that papers to tons of natural graphite, 417 tons of that effect were drafted and sent to cadmium metals, and tubes in an entry us in Montana. If the full amount had been available, instead of designating 6,883 tons of "aluminum tubes". 45 pounds, the aggregate would have been 1,920 pounds, or virtu- The figure for cadmium was arresting in view of its extreme ally one ton. scarcity in this country and because of the fact that it occurs, so At his Paris laboratory, while chief of the Atomic Energy far as we know, sparsely if at all in the Soviet Union. Under war Commission of France, Frederic Joliot-Curie built an experimen- stimulus, American production of cadmium rose from 2,182 short tal pile to which he gave the affectionate name of "Zoe". It actu- tons in 1940 to 4,192 in 1945. ally ran, though the wattage was feeble. The quantity of uranium It was interesting to find that in 1942-45 we shipped to Russia crystals utilized, said Dr Joliot-Curie, was "something in the order 437 tons of cobalt—a staggering amount when collated with of one ton". American production, which was nothing before the war, and It seems fair to take into account not merely what the Russians increased to 382 tons in 1942 and 575 in 1945. got, but what they tried to get. With Communist tenacity and That cobalt is valuable in the A-bomb for retarding radioactive ardent support from both White House and Lend-Lease, the emanations, and could be equally so in the hydrogen bomb, has Soviet Purchasing Commission strove again and again to obtain been affirmed by a chemical engineer who was consultant to one 8-1/2 tons each of uranium oxide and uranium nitrate, plus 25 of the war agencies. "Cobalt," says he, "was one of our highest pounds of uranium metal. The campaign started in February scarcity materials. If I had known that so large a proportion was 1943, and persisted until the Russians were squelched by going to the Russians, I should have suspected them of being at Secretary Stimson during April 1944. work on the bomb." Incidentally, cobalt was the first item to be There are memorable instances of what can be achieved with restricted by President Truman in the Korean emergency. less than 17 tons of uranium powders. One was a model atomic Almost as curious was the discovery that we shipped to Russia pile which went into operation at Chicago University on more than 12 tons of thorium salts and compounds. Two other December 2, 1942. "So far as we know," Dr Smyth recounts, elements alone, besides uranium and plutonium, are fissionable. "this was the first time that human beings ever initiated a self- They are protoactinium and thorium. The former may be disre- maintaining nuclear chain reaction." With a power level of 200 garded because of its rarity in nature. But thorium, which is rela- watts, the device served as a pilot plant for the Hanford Engineer _ tively plentiful, is expected by physicists to rival uranium some Works. The uranium supply available to them was six tons. day, or even supplant it, as a source of atomic energy. Even earlier, before the Manhattan Project was dreamed of, a Then there were cerium and strontium, of which the Soviet group of scientists at Columbia University began a course of haz- Purchasing Commission obtained 44 tons. Both metals, along ardous experiments under the leadership of two foreign-born with cadmium, thorium and cobalt, figured in Colonel Kotikov's savants, Leo Szilard of Hungary and Enrico Fermi of Italy. They dossier on experimental chemicals. They are useless for atomic were so ill-supported with cash that 10,000 pounds of uranium purposes. But Russian scientists may have been working their oxide had to be ‘rented’ at a nominal fee of 30 cents a pound from way through the rare earths and metals on a well-founded suspi- Boris Pregel, president of the Canadian Radium & Uranium Corp. cion that something momentous was afoot in that group. of New York, who was later unjustly made a scapegoat by the , press for the secret Canadian shipment. Continued on page 90 30 + NEXUS Continued on page 90 FEBRUARY - MARCH 1997