Isotopes for Research

Scientists cheered another indication that the Atomic Age was starting to roll. After long delay and soul-searching, the Manhattan District this week agreed to supply qualified customers with about 100 radioactive isotopes produced in its Oak Ridge uranium piles. For chemists, physicists and biologists the isotopes are important scientific tools.

Most crying need for them is in medicine, not to cure disease (though the isotopes may do this too), but to probe basic biological processes. Radioactive carbon 14, for example, may be fed to human beings or laboratory animals. Though present only in sub-microscopic quantities, it will announce its presence to sensitive instruments. Physiologists can follow it through the body, even into individual cells.

Medicine is but one promising field for the isotopes. Chemists will also use them as "tracers." Physicists will use them as cheap, convenient sources of powerful radioactivity. In many industrial fields--electronics is an obvious case--Oak Ridge's isotopes are certain to stimulate new research.

Before the uranium pile was developed for atom bombs, artificial isotopes were made by cyclotrons, and were enormously expensive. The pile produces them much more cheaply, for any substance exposed to the hurricane of neutrons which rages inside the pile quickly becomes radioactive. They are still expensive by ordinary standards, but their cost should fall rapidly. Production at Oak Ridge will be supervised by practical Monsanto Chemical Co.

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