WOI-TV: Challenge - Atomic Research

The unknown How much still lies behind this barrier? Men and women devote their lives to a search for its secrets among them the scientist who finds in this unknown his challenge Indicates that every piece of apparatus is ready and in working order Ten seconds to 5:20 a.m Five seconds four three two Zero What you've just seen is an atomic explosion and everyday ordinary atomic bomb Releasing a terrific amount of energy and causing a terrific amount of destruction Now if we were to take say half a million gallons of gasoline, we'd have the same amount of power But not only is the atomic bomb used as a weapon of destruction. It can be used as peacetime power perhaps to provide power for the lights in the city or maybe to power our boats ships as we know a submarine, but before we get into this era of Atomic research and the atomic power I'd like you to meet two gentlemen, first of all, dr. Adolf Voigt of the Ames Laboratory He's a nuclear chemist or a radio chemist. Whichever you so choose to call him and Next to dr. Voit is our science host Dr. Getz head of the chemistry department here at Iowa State College Dr. Voit what is the difference in the usage of atomic energy for the atomic bomb Versus the usage in peacetime needs and before we actually get into that. What is an atom? Well Jake an atom is the smallest amount of matter that a person can have that still looks like matter But don't get me wrong. We can't see it it would take 30 I think trillions of them to cover the head of a pin the But if we enlarge these atoms to the point that we could see them. They might look something like this Not with labels on them But this represents an atom in any case an atom of uranium and as you know without uranium we wouldn't have atomic power Atomic power in explosions or for the generation of useful power is produced in this way We take another little thing. We call it a neutron. It's a small Particle, which is not found in nature But which can be made very easily and with that we bombard this Uranium and in the process the uranium sweats into two large pieces with the release of this tremendous energy We've been talking about in addition to that energy these two large pieces that are called fission products there are neutrons additional neutrons liberated and these holds a key to the whole process of the release of power for useful or destructive purposes If we use these neutrons to strike other uranium atoms If we use each one of these neutrons we can get in every cycle and larger and larger number of uranium atoms involved If we make this happen in a very small fraction of a second we get this power released all at once as in the atomic bomb if however we Absorb a couple of these neutrons and only let one of them go from one cycle to the next we can have a a slow regulated Release of power that can be used for peaceful purpose. All right Now, let me see if I have this straight active voice. We start out with a unit here an amount an atom of uranium We have a neutron and we with this Neutron we clobber this atom of uranium Byproducts are given off fission products that you call them in your line of business We're not concerned with those right now. What we are concerned with are the neutrons that are given off by this Hitting of the uranium atom by another Neutron and and these neutrons in turn hit more Uranium atoms and more neutrons are given off and more and more if this happens all at once we have an atomic explosion Yes But if we control the amount of neutrons that we allow to attack this these atoms of uranium Then we can control the amount of energy given off and we have a system for providing power. Is that right? That's right Well Jake, it might be well to go back to your room Gasoline comparison you commented that comic bomb had About much power in it is a half a million gallons of gasoline Well, now you could take this half a million gallons of gasoline and the evaporator mix it with the right amount of air and touch It off and you would have a big explosion - did you do with the atomic bomb? But as you know, you can take this happening the gasoline Feed it into a carburetor of a gasoline engine and get a steady flow of power As a matter of fact that half million gallons of gasoline Is enough gasoline to run a motor car five hundred times around the world? So you see here with this? Uranium fuel if you control these neutrons and let them flow Gradually and steadily into other uranium atoms. You can get this splitting and a steady full power So the power of uranium we can give a very very large amount of energy to over a very long period of time For instance as is used on what is this submarine that we saw christened on the Nautilus where maybe Eisenhower? Christened did on television did you see that? Yes, I saw that he almost missed no She doesn't miss Mamie did a very good job. I think the Yanks will be signing her up She laid down a very beautiful bunch all off there and when it started to move she cracked it Good Looked like a near miss to me the Submarine is one form of one way of getting this power out, but the problems that we're concerned with are not quite tied in so close to that submarine as you might think that is the submarine is a vessel of military importance and Economics don't enter into the picture very much for one thing these fission products We've been talking about have the property of absorbing these neutrons and while you want a certain number of those neutrons Absorbed you don't want to absorb all of them or else your process will die so that you have to get rid of these fission products in the case of the submarine fuel think this can be taken out and put into a taking out from the submarine and Reprocess in some laboratory at considerable expense in the case of that. We're interested in for civilian power This is the process has to be made cheap so that this civilian power can compete with other sorts of Apollo and this is one of your this is your Field in isn't it? This is one problem that is being worked on in the Ames Laboratory in which the group that were associated with is Working on well, how about this idea of radiation these fission products are very highly radioactive material and To illustrate radioactivity The Geiger counter here is the usual method for measuring radioactive materials I have here a sample of of radioactive phosphorus which produces its Results in the Geiger counter as you can see The but I'd have to go to anything quite as bad as the As quite as different as radioactive phosphorus all of us has a certain amount of radioactivity makes it with us without you Charlie In your body and also in your radium dial wristwatch Charlie's got anything for that watch? yeah, this got yours beat all hollow now this radiation One is always concerned with this radiation because you've all heard stories about how harmful it can be in large quantities, but a radiation is all around us we have Radiation from the Sun and other kinds of radiation that we deal with every day sunlight can itself be dangerous if you get too much of it the rays from the Sun will Strike the body and produce a pleasant tan in a short time. But if you take them over too long a period of time this Process will become so we'll go in so far that you would get the sick from it Another Type of radiation that people are very familiar with is the x-ray. This is an x-ray tube doctor fassl's tube, isn't it? Yes, it's the same tube that festival had on his show And in this case the it's more penetrating than sun rays as you know The Sun will give you a surface pan and the sunburn Chemical reaction taking place as adolph says but when the x-rays it penetrates all the way through the body So these chemicals upset chemical reactions? well, you have chemical reactions going on your body the building of cells and so on all chemical actions and These x-rays will disturb these and make you sick Create cancer the same time it can you be used to destroy cancer cells? in other words these this radiation can be good and bad depending on the control and The Radium is another source of radiation. It's a radioactive material Oh very much like the radioactive materials that come from the atomic explosion radium is normally carried around in a LED pot such as this one and handled by means of of tongs Those there doctor gets his moustache tweezers by the way didn't know well This I wouldn't handle this this closely if it were really radium But like a lot of the other things that you might tell you this is a stand-in Yeah, we usually use table salt on his burgers but the in any case the radium is handled in in a way in which to protect the person who's handling it and it is this a matter of protection of the personnel that is one of the chief worries of the radio chemist and the person who supervises radio chemists because He has to see that they are adequately protected from these radiations even when they handle them in quantities that that might be dangerous if they didn't use the These protections just sunshine and you have the same problem with really other radiations For example the Sun Shine 10 or 15 minutes of sunshine is good But you stay in for several hours and you get very sick from sunburn Same token No One can work with radioactive chemicals for a few minutes without harm what you don't want to get it under your fingernails and carry around for several days or inhaling now our Radio director here our TV director. Excuse me This is assimilated glovebox He took the box away so that you can see what goes on but here now a table is going to mix two chemicals, which Creates a Radioactive material we'd be in trouble We'd have to get out of there real quick and probably take several days if not weeks before this place could be decontaminated Don't be safe. And if we inhale those in our lungs with these sick ducks, or Maybe dead ducks before too long. It's not like we should leave right now Well, you see this was a simulated box. We didn't have a box and These rubber gloves here that Adolf's getting out of Protects from getting it on his hand now we know what a real box here. They don't protect you from your lungs whereas the the real box that we have here will do both protected you got to keep it from getting in your hands and because it's Enclosed it will keep it from getting in your lungs as well. I see they're using most of the CAO these days One of the things JQ knows this box completely enclosed now. Normally you'll have ventilation and filters Well, this air is being changed in here, but we don't have that fancy. You'll hear now He's gonna mix these same chemicals in here. Now. You see they're retained in the box so that he's not getting it on his hands because his hands are in rubber gloves and We're not having to bring you this so that this is a matter of protection This is one of the true tools of the radio. Kemon without it He wouldn't be able to work with a lot of materials. Now. This is a complete laboratory in itself, though I see we have electrical outlets. We have a centrifuge in the bottom Light and clothes there and imagine you could have exhaust vents on it and everything. Yes there are normally exhaust vents and filters to filter out this dust so that the air can be Let out to the atmosphere without endangering anybody outside of the system itself. Well, how does someone such as you dr white get started in the field of nuclear Chemistry. Well when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan the field of nuclear chemistry was a little bit newer and less known at that time than it is now and it seemed to be a fascinating field in which to do one's work and at that time we worked with a An atom smasher a thing called a cyclotron and produce new kinds of atoms. You know, there are 98 Elements as we know them 98 different kinds of atoms exist in nature on the Periodic Chart in a periodic chart But these for these various atoms exist in many forms, all of them have some forms that are normal and and calm and collected and some forms that are highly excited and give off radiation and these are the ones that we call radioactive and the job of the radio chemist is to work out the nature the relationships of these atoms to each other their Behavior how long they live how much energy they give off when they decay and and all sorts of Properties like that. Well, where did you do your undergraduate work at? Pomona College in California Pomona, I'm a Californian by birth. The adolph is a very important 450 You don't have many people come from California to Iowa a lot of people going by with a, California I understand that you grew up in a lemon patch lemon Groves, they call them outgrowth. Yeah, this accounts in some way from my sour disposition but the Research that a radio chemist does is connected with this matter of Finding out what atoms belong where and them in the isotope chart and also with the use of these atoms in different kinds of research and one of the Jobs that I have is that as teaching courses in the use of radioactive tracers in agricultural Research biological research and engineering research here on the campus by a weight off while ago when you were working with a Geiger counter You talked about radioactive phosphorus This is a very important research chemical that is being used to study plant growth nutrition see phosphorus an important nutrient in soils and The people that are working in this new field will have to be trained to work safely You have to learn to work with Boxes such as these and learn what's safe and what's not safe and in addition to teaching these people Dr. Boyce group has a responsibility for rendering service around the campus to help people work safely with this material C8 office like many others of us has a lot of titles. He's the professor of chemistry He's assistant to the director of the Institute for Tomic research. He's an associate scientist in the Ames Laboratory and Just like the rest of us, they trade titles for salaries. So when did you come to Iowa State College in 1942 when the About the time of the wartime research on atomic energy started here is at the college then you worked with dr. Spedding than dr Wilhelm and dr. Facile and some of the other I'm still working with them in the various research project the I'd like to make one point clear with regard to the general use of radioactive materials in research and that is that for most research involving radioactive tracers this kind of Elaborate equipment is not necessary usually you're dealing with a level in which a normal laboratory will be adequate for for the research but in certain special problems a Particularly these problems relating to power you do need this Elaborate equipment you see if we go back to the general theme that we started with Jake we talked about these ashes from the Atomic furnace. Yeah these ashes, you know absorb these neutrons and the controlling of the neutrons Is the controlling of our power plant? It's like putting down your foot feet on your automobile you feed more gasoline in just Lakoff you feed less gasoline in and by the same token, we have to control these these neutrons and these ashes although they Are helpful in some ways to slow this engine down so we don't have an explosion they can also put it out and when you get to high levels of radiation such as these These so-called nations have then you have to get into more protective equipment than these boxes These these boxes are not protection. Well, here's a An intermediate step This is normally placed in a glove box with a lead shield in front and rather on that side in front you're your the operator there and How to work this yeah, this is you normally view this through two inches of lead lead glass shielding and two inches of lead so that Radiation which would penetrate through that other stuff is blocked by it You're doing very well so far Jake I've practiced enough I must admit You got that connected the right bottle so you're going to get some reagent this is my way in which one would add reagent to it to a system down underneath here is a Well for a centrifuge which would be present in this in the box itself then when you want to let go Dribble in Jake well, I stopped squeezing the bulb Something must be sweeping how you've got that squeezed beneath this opinion. That's all right now I cut this far but what happens now now you push that black button this one here. Yeah Whoa, Jake your burners keep with television. I know but you're gonna make good chemin Getting radiated all over now. That's right. Just water Don't let it worry what you see if that we're radioactive. It would have to be contained inside of safety means and You have to learn to manipulate things Without breakage and when you get to high-level radiation such as we have with these ashes an atomic furnace You'll have a real problem. Yes for this Purpose for the purpose of handling these things an area was recently completed in the research building which we call the hot Canyon this Hot Canyon has a 1/8 inch steel shield with eight inch lead glass windows and this was largely designed here and built by our engineering department under the direction of Ray Fisher and Largely engineered by garden winders. This is something we're quite proud of in the laboratory We feel that it will do a lot of jobs for us the manipulators that you see are handled on the outside of this wall by Workers and the motions of the workers goes through are duplicated on the inside by the fingers of the manipulator The story you have seen is true only the ions have been changed to protect the chemist and that's about it like science fiction It's a wonderful story well Jake, we try not to be too serious as chemists but sometimes hard to Think about your subject and be here on television a little tied up Well before we go into our closing I'd like to once you mention one more thing or have you I don't think we've mentioned what we're wearing right here These are gadgets to measure the amount of radiation that a person might receive. It's a matter of protection To prevent him from getting too much at any time. This is a Pocket chamber this is a film badge. They're used to the same duplicates for the same purpose of measuring radiation As we're concerned they're just properties. I'd like to sort of summarize for you Jake what we are trying to put across the night we of course have this this new tool this uranium that breaks down to give off neutrons and power if this is allowed to take place in a fraction of a second you liberate to amend esc' want ease of power and We have the atomic bomb which everyone is familiar with now, we that's that's old stuff. And the new thing now is to harness this for domestic use Now it takes time and it takes a lot of basic chemical research in order to come up with these answers Now in the case of dr. Voit our guest for the evening. He's an expert in this field of radio chemistry his Field of studying these some nine hundred active isotopes and these ashes that are formed when uranium splits to give off with Creates is challenged Incidentally this problem that they're working on now Civilian use that industrial people are interested in Things back from basic research that was done way back early in the Manhattan district project During the war and it's because of the know-how and experience That was shown at that time that the money is being given to the laboratory to Carry on this work now The Proposition of taking these Radioactive ashes out of the Fire box is not a simple thing a very complicated chemical operation we've passed it over lightly Knights able to take it back to the laboratory in the case of the War machine and submarine We're in cost is not the primary item But if you're going to have a domestic use, you've got to learn to do this on the job and do it quicker and it's this job at the present time that Dr. Boyd, dr. Dana and dr. Spedding and other people are doing and The basic work back of this is dr. Boyce real challenge. This is one typical application of present Basic research. Thank you very very much. Dr. Jetson and dr. Adolph white Next week. Dr. Hickson of Iowa State College will be our guest. Dr. Hickson is former head of the chemistry department The chemistry of corn provides for this scientist is challenged