Science: Jobs for Elements

Modern physics is beginning to find jobs for unemployed elements; even the rarest and most intractable of them may soon be put to useful work. In the current Nucleonics, British Physicist R. West tells how he has found a job for thulium, an element so rare that its oxide costs $9,000 an ounce. Physicist West formed thulium into tiny pellets which he made radioactive by cooking in a nuclear reactor. Then he was able to take delicate pictures with thulium's gentle X rays.

Two other unemployed elements, europium and xenon, may also be used in the same way for special X-ray photography. Even americium, a doubly transmuted element created by neutron bombardment of man-made plutonium, may be useful as an X-ray source. West is waiting impatiently until it comes on the market as a byproduct of the booming atom-bomb industry.