Science: Hot Factory

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Among the low, brown hills of eastern Tennessee stands a factory whose total product for 1949 weighed less than 1/10,000th of an ounce. The weight of its average shipment is less than that of the graphite in a penciled signature; the container usually weighs a billion times more. Yet the products of this factory, the radioisotope plant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have already revolutionized many branches of science.

Last week the laboratory showed off some new and weird equipment designed to make isotope production both faster and safer. The isotopes are made by a chain-reacting pile in a pale green, blocky building. Some of them are fission products that accumulate in the pile's uranium fuel. Others are formed in aluminum cans of raw material "cooked" by the pile's neutrons.

Cooling the Cans. When the cans first come out of the pile they are fiercely radioactive. Men with long poles flip them into thick-walled lead tunnels to cool off. After eight hours, most of the aluminum's short-lived activity has died away and the cans' milder-mannered contents are safe enough to work on.

The isotopes are separated and purified in a row of deceptively cheerful-looking small buildings. Through the aluminum sheathing seep floods of deadly rays. The workers inside, protected by thick barriers', are safer than an interloper blundering close to the outside walls.

Most of the processing work is done by remote control. The quieter isotopes can be watched through glass or plastic. The stronger ones must be watched with mirrors, as Perseus watched Medusa reflected in his polished shield. The gamma rays they send out pass right through a mirror and do not strike the worker who is watching from one side.

Safety Showers. The whole plant, even the lavatories, swarms with watchful Geiger counters. They are usually clicking phlegmatically, but they can roar a sudden warning if anything goes wrong. In each building is a place on the floor marked "shower." A worker who has spilled a dangerous substance on his clothes can dash to the shower and drench himself with life-saving water.

The purified isotopes are stored for packing in a long brick building. The innocent-looking bottles stand on racks behind a high, thick barrier. Watching their work in mirrors, the shipping clerks select a bottle. With remote-control devices that unscrew the bottle's cap, they take out a measured amount of liquid, put it into another bottle and seal it in the proper container, which may contain several hundred pounds of lead.

No one breathes a sigh of relief when the dangerous stuff goes off the grounds. The work has become routine; last year the plant made 4,715 shipments, an increase of 56% over 1947. Each shipment, besides accomplishing important scientific tasks,.trained more people to deal with the perils of the developing Atomic Age.