RADIUM DANCER

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 233, 13 September 1939, Page 4

RADIUM DANCER

IX TIME OF WAR PitEGAUTKIN3 IN ENGLAND Because of the great danger to hie if a store of radium were struck by a bomb, supplies possessed by hospitals are to be collected in time of war az certain certtregrand. r^-binnodi-in special boreholes 50ft. deep, said the” Mu - Chester Guardian in a recent article. There they would he safe from a direct hit from the“iTeaviest--bombjS... _ One of the boreholes, which has just been completed at the Mothit Vernon Hospital, Xortlnvood, Middlesex, was inspected hyi Lady Harcourt, representing the board of governors of tiie hospital, ~ahd Dr. H. A. Boldero, 10presentiug the Ministry of Health, after they had cut the first soo:s on the site of cue of the Ministry’s new .emergency hospitals. Dr. John Bead, one of the physicists at'Mount Vernon Hospital, told a reporter that something like 20 grammes of radium, worth about £IOO,OOO, would be ' sent there from neighbouring hospitals’in the event of war. It would be put in the borehoie in brass boxes sealed in a steel tube. If such a quantity of radium were hit by a bomb the area over which it was dispersed might become a death trap for many years, so great is the lethal power of uncontrolled radium. The new emergency hospital js being' built in tlie gi'Oiihds of the Mount Vernon Hospital, and will have 800 beds, with accommodlation for medical staff and nurses. It is one of a number of emergency hospitals to-he' built on the outskirts of .'big cities and forms part of the ./scheme- for dealing with the evacuation of the London area.