Sources for Industry

Brookhaven National Laboratory announced this week that it has made some rather scary objects: radioactive sources as powerful as three or four pounds of radium.* They glow in the dark with an eerie blue light and are so dangerous that they must be kept under several feet of water or behind thick lead or concrete shields.

The sources are made by "cooking" cobalt or tantalum tubes (13 1/2 in. long) in Brookhaven's nuclear reactor at Upton, N.Y. There the original metals turn into cobalt-60 and tantalum-182, both of which emit gamma rays with more than 1,000,000 electron volts of energy.

Brookhaven does not plan to ship its powerful playthings anywhere just yet; they are too dangerous to be allowed off the reservation. But it is inviting industrial scientists to send samples to be exposed to their radiation. Their hot blasts of gamma rays may prove to have valuable industrial properties. They can start or speed up chemical reactions, turn certain liquids (e.g., methyl methacrylate) into solid plastics. Their most valuable application may be in food processing, for their gamma rays reportedly kill microorganisms without heating the food material or making it radioactive.

* More than the entire world's pre-World War II supply.

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