Read Ebook: The peaceful atom by Hunt Bernice Kohn Onyshkewych Zenowij Illustrator

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The most serious experiments, so far, with atomic locomotives, have been made in the U.S.S.R. That country, because of its vast size, has an unusual amount of freight traffic. Trains now use up one quarter of all the coal and oil produced there. The Russians have completed the design for an atomic locomotive that will have a speed of 75 miles an hour while pulling a load of 4,000 tons. It will travel for almost a year without new fuel, and will go from Moscow to Riga and back on a piece of uranium the size of a marble!

Designers here and abroad have also started to think about atomic airplanes. One type of design would use a reactor similar to the power plant reactor. It would make steam, the steam would drive a turbine, and the turbine would turn the propellers.

Another design would work on the turbojet principle and wouldn't need steam. Air would be scooped in and heated by the reactor, then shot out of the rear jets, driving the plane ahead.

However, there are serious problems in designing an atomic plane. One of the hardest to solve is the radioactive exhaust that would come from the reactor. All of the waste products of an atomic furnace are highly radioactive and very dangerous to humans. They can cause serious injury or death. People have to be protected from radioactive materials by heavy shielding of concrete or lead. On a plane, of course, the weight of such a heavy shield would create a difficult problem. The shield would weigh more than the gasoline the atomic fuel replaced.

In time, however, there will probably be a solution to the problem, and atomic planes will be made. There will be no worry about running out of fuel. Such things as head winds, long flights across water, and fuel leaks will no longer be threats to the safety of plane passengers. And when the shielding, problem is solved, instead of carrying 50 tons of gasoline, a big plane will be able to carry 50 tons more of people or cargo.

All of these possibilities are just ideas now. But someday, perhaps, you will chuckle over the old-fashioned days before A-trains and A-planes--or, even A-cars!

ATOMS THAT TRACE

Some radioisotopes are made on purpose by putting certain elements into a reactor. But many radioisotopes are made in all atomic reactors as a natural product of the chain reaction. After the fuel has been used, the radioisotopes are removed from the ashes.

Most elements have at least one radioisotope and many have several. They have thousands of important uses and new ones are found every day.

There are a few properties of radioisotopes which make them useful. One of them is the fact that they give off radiation and so they can always be found with a Geiger counter. This is an instrument which ticks when it is struck by an atomic ray. With the help of a counter, radioisotopes can be used as tracers, or tags.

Tracers are used in dozens of interesting ways. One is to find leaks in pipes. Sometimes there is a leaky pipe buried in the floors or walls of a building. How can you find out where the leak is without tearing the building apart? It is very simple. Just add a tiny bit of a radioisotope to the water in the pipe. Then move a Geiger counter along the floor or wall in which the pipe is enclosed. When the ticks stop--or continue, but spread out over a large area--you have found the leak.

A similar trick is often used in the oil industry. Sometimes the same pipeline is used for oil and for gasoline. A worker at the far end of the pipeline has the job of turning off a valve when the oil stops coming through, and turning on a different valve to send the gasoline to the proper tank. But how does he know when the oil is finished and the gasoline is about to start? There's nothing to it. A dash of radioisotope is mixed with the last gallon of oil. The worker keeps his Geiger counter on the pipe. When it begins to tick, it's time to make the change.

If you had a tire factory, how would you find out which kind of rubber gave the best wear? You could make four different kinds of tires and add a bit of radioisotope to the rubber of each. With the tires on a car, instead of driving thousands of miles, as in the past, you could drive just a short distance. As the tires turned, tiny bits of rubber would wear off. A Geiger counter moved over the tire tracks would tell you right away which tire lost the least rubber. Tire companies use this test widely.

Radioisotopes mixed with wax or polish tell how much is left on a car after washing. Radioactive dirt smeared on cloth tells which detergent does the best washing job. If radioisotopes are mixed with the liquid in a tank, a Geiger counter on the outside of the tank can tell where the top of the liquid is. This is much easier than sending a man all the way to the top of the tank to measure the contents with a dip stick.

When ancient writings about Biblical times, called the Dead Sea Scrolls, were found, they were wrapped in linen. The linen, made from the fibers of the flax plant, was tested for carbon-14. It was found to be about 2,000 years old. The same method has been used to find the age of ancient wood, leather, cloth, bones--and even mummies!

Radioisotope tracers have been of great benefit to farmers. Mixed with fertilizers, they can be followed with a Geiger counter to see just how the plant uses the fertilizer and how fast. Tracers have shown how certain feeds make animals grow fatter. They help in the study of milk production by cows, egg production by chickens, and growth of wool on sheep.

Perhaps the most important of all tracer uses is in medicine. Radioactive iodine, or iodine-131, is used to find diseases of the thyroid gland. The patient swallows a small dose of the tracer and a counter shows how fast it is taken in by the thyroid gland. This shows how active the gland is. Tracers also help to find brain tumors. And they can be used to follow the circulation of the blood. If an artery is blocked, a person may die because his blood can't circulate. A counter can find the trouble spot and help save a life.

Radioisotopes which are used as medical tracers are not harmful to the body. They are carefully selected to have a very short half-life. Their radioactivity is gone before it can do damage. Also, they are used in tiny quantities.

While radioisotopes do wonderful jobs as tracers, they can do some other very interesting things, too. Let's see what some of them are.

ATOMS TO CHANGE ATOMS

Radioisotopes do many important jobs for us by irradiation. In industry, certain petroleum and other materials are changed by irradiation into special fuels, oils, and even synthetic rubber.

Irradiation is used to improve the quality of plastics and to vulcanize rubber. It used to take several hours to vulcanize with heat. A few minutes of irradiation does the same job.

The food industry has begun to experiment with irradiation as a new way to sterilize food. Items which normally spoil quickly, such as hamburger, sausage, cheese, and bread, are exposed to radiation. The rays destroy all of the bacteria that cause food to spoil. The food is immediately sealed in airtight plastic bags. It will remain perfectly fresh for months--or even years. This process may make the canning or freezing of food completely unnecessary.

Even foods which generally keep well, such as onions or potatoes, can be helped by irradiation. The treatment kills any insects that might be in the sack, and also keeps the vegetables from sprouting. A treated potato will keep for a very long time. A number of experiments have been done with potatoes. Before long you will probably see irradiated potatoes for sale in your market.

Irradiation can even improve food crops and other plants while they are still being grown. Changes caused by the rays have already created new and better varieties of corn, peanuts, and oats. The same dose of irradiation works in another way, too--it kills the insects which damage the crops.

Besides their many uses as tracers and irradiators, isotopes have great value as substitutes for expensive X-ray machines. The rays can pass through many materials and, by making a picture on a film underneath, can show differences in thickness or other flaws. Some of the materials that are inspected this way are sheet metal, paper, rubber, and plastics. Also, piston rings for auto engines, and airplane engine valves.

Doctors, too, can use radioisotopes instead of X rays. An X-ray machine is a huge piece of equipment which needs a special room and costs thousands of dollars. A radioisotope machine is about the size of a large can of fruit juice and weighs only ten pounds. It can be carried about easily and is most valuable in an emergency or at a place where there is no X ray available.

These are only some of the things that atoms can do for us. Atomic energy is still young. In the years to come, there will be many changes. During your lifetime, the peaceful atom should make the world an easier, healthier, happier place!

Some other important atomic pioneers:

Chadwick, James: Discovered the neutron in 1932.

Joliot-Curie, Irene and Frederic: Daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, and her husband. Were the first to make artificial radioisotopes in 1933.

Rutherford, Ernest: Worked out the nature of radioactivity in 1902, discovered the nucleus of the atom in 1911, and split the first atom in 1919.

Soddy, Frederic: Discovered isotopes in 1910.

Urey, Harold: Discovered hydrogen's heavy isotope, deuterium, in 1932.

GLOSSARY

INDEX

alpha particle, 30 atomic energy, 8 atomic number, 27 atomic pile, 36 atomic power, 42 atomic theory, 15

Becquerel, Antoine Henri, 20 beta particles, 30 boiling water reactor, 44 breeder reactor, 46

cadmium, 38 carbon-14, 56 chain reaction, 35, 36, 44 chemical compound, 15 Compton. Arthur H., 40 Conant, James B., 40 control rod, 38 Curie, Marie, 22 Curie, Pierre, 22

Dalton, John, 15 Dead Sea Scrolls, 57 decay, 30 Democritus, 13

electron, 26, 29 element, 15 energy, 32

Fermi, Enrico, 36 fission, 34 fossil fuels, 9, 46

gamma rays, 30 Geiger counter, 53 graphite, 36, 44

half-life, 32 helium, 28

Iodine-131, 57 ionization, 60 irradiation, 60 isotopes, 28

neutron, 26, 28 nucleus, 27, 29

pitchblende, 23 plutonium, 46 power plant, 42 pressurized water reactor, 43 proton, 26

radioactivity, 22 radioactive cocktail, 64 radioactive iodine, 57 radioisotope, 52, 64 radium, 23, 30, 32

Roentgen, Wilhelm K., 18

thorium, 23, 30 tracers, 53

uranium, 20, 29, 30, 32, 43

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