BASE METAL INTO GOLD— AT A COST

Chronicle (Levin), 3 December 1947, Page 5

BASE METAL INTO GOLD— AT A COST

Received Tuesday, 7 p.m. NEW YORK, Dec. 1. Atomic energy can fulfil the dreams of Mediaeval alchemists — turn base metal into gold — but there is a catch to it. Newspapermen who were pennitted to inspect two chain reaction piles — atomic furnaces J'or controllmg the release of nuclear energy — at ihe Argonne NationaL Lahoratory today, were told hy the laboratory director, Dr. Walter Zinn, that gold could he manufactured in the piies but the process would he more costly* than digging gold out of the ground. Dr. Zinn gave the visitors a couple of "minor" denionstrations of what can he done in aitering the structure of metals. With long aluminium tongs he held up a srnall piece of silver in front of one of the openings in the pile through which neutron beams are emitted. In ihree seconds the silver was radioactive and had turned into cadmium through changes in its atomic structure. Then Dr. Zinn held up a thin foil of uranium '238. It was turned qiuckiy mto piutomum.