RADIUM

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 1, 17 January 1944, Page 30

RADIUM

How Wonder Element has developed

From Salt, Australian Army Education Journal

At Joachmysthal, in Czechoslovakia, Bohemians for centuries mined

silver. They dug out large ■quantities of the metal, so large that the dollar (thaller) was named after the mine. So large, too, that in time huge dumps of the black ore, pitchiblende, which contained the silver, surrounded the mines. The Bohemians were blissfully ignorant that, in this pitchblende, they were throwing away the world’s most precious metal —the magical radium.

In the gay “ nineties,” pitchblende’s habit of glowing brightly in darkness •came to be regarded as a pleasant drawing-room divertisement —until a piece got mixed up with a photographic plate in a dark pigeonhole in the laboratory of a French scientist, Henri Becquerel. This piece printed its image on the photographic plate. Tests showed that pitchblende’s radiance was not due to fluorescence (the storing of applied light), but came from some internal substance. M. Becquerel assigned a young Polish refugee, Marie Curie, and her French husband, Pierre, to the job •of tracking down the source of this light.

The Curies decided that the radiation from pitchblende and X-rays were similar. For four years they delved among the several tons of residue from the Joachmysthal dumps, which they had been given by the mine-owners, until they •collected a pinch of salt which was a compound of saline and almost pure radium.

The pinch of salt led to the greatest somersault science has had to make in modern times. There was an old and well-authenticated belief that all basic elementsgold, oxygen, &c.—were indestructible. It was now revealed that radium, emanating heat, light, and ■energy at uncountable speed, physically disintegrates like an irresponsible comet, But that such is its power that it loses

only half its energy in 1,690 years and continues at this rate to eternity.

There were other amazing properties. A particle of this lustrous white metal, about half the weight of an equivalent volume of silver, gives off one million times as much energy as an equal weight of burning coal. One ton of radium would boil 1,000 tons of water for a year. Tt electrifies air. A grain of radium held over the spine of a mouse would paralyse it and kill it in fifteen hours.

Scientists were jolted into feverish activity at the sight of an atom smashing itself. They hastened to find uses for this new-found power, called for larger supplies.

The Joachmysthal earth was meticulously refined. The result was disappointing. The yield was only a few grains a year. Then in 1912, in Colorado and Utah (U.S.A.), greater quantities were found in carnotite deposits. About 75,000 tons of this ore produced an ounce. The market price was about £25,000 a gram—one twenty-eighth of an ounce. There was a heavy demand. Mineral with a small radium content was found in Portugal and Madagascar.

Deposits of uranium containing radium were discovered in 1906 near Olary on the railway-line between Broken Hill and Adelaide, and in 1911 at Mount Plainter in the Northern Flinders Range, but the last war terminated the venture. It has since been regarded as too costly a proposition to be a commercial success.

Pitchblende from a copper-mine in tropical Belgian Congo was refined in 1922 in Belgium and, at approximately £15,000 a gram, monopolized the world market.

Then, from a rocky outcrop on the shores of Great Bear Lake in the Arctic wastes of north-west Canada in 1930, Gilbert Laßine, prospecting for silver, hacked out “ a tiny dark piece of ore

the size of a large plum.” He found that it contained pitchblende. He had tapped the most lucrative vein of radium-bearing ore yet discovered.

Now, 600 ft. beneath the snows, in steam-heated shafts, radium-uranium-silver ore is blasted out at the rate of 100 tons a day. Every 6| tons of the ore yields a gram of radium.

It is estimated that man now possesses between 600 and 700 grams of radium — less than a pound and a half. Much has been used in luminous paint for clock and dial sights and other precision instruments, a use greatly expanded since the war.

The industrial uses of radium are almost limitless. Light rays fly off at such a short wave-length from the mineral that they can pierce battleship armour or a heavy mass of lead. So it is used to reveal, on radiographs, flaws in vital parts of important machinery. Experiments have shown that it can work miracles in the processing of silk and glass,

the canning of foods, the stimulation of plant-growth.

Its medical value, also, is incalculable. It is used in the treatment of birth-marks, eczema, ringworm, psoriasis, acne, warts, neuralgia, goitre. It will force menstruation to function normally and influence the work of the pituitary gland. Australian Army medical officers are using radium and its derivative gas, radon, increasingly in the treatment of tropical ulcers.

But radium’s greatest aid to mankind, has been in the treatment of cancer. With it many cases of early cancer can be cured, and it is an absolute cure for certain types of the disease such as cancer of the skin.

Of all our diseases, cancer is the most fatal. Commonwealth statistics show that one in every eight deaths is caused by this dread malady. To some extent this results from the fact that medical science has partly overcome many other diseases (tuberculosis, for example) and cancer usually occurs in older people.

Cancerous growths are made up of malignant cells which increase enormously, spreading to various parts of the body until they cause death. Radium rays demolish these cells but do not so readily affect the ordinary body cells. In most cases needles containing radium or radon are inserted in the tissue containing the growth and left until the rays have done their work. The growth shrivels up and eventually disappears, leaving not even a scar on the affected tissue.

Since 1928 the Commonwealth Government has owned 10 grams of radium —- £IOO,OOO worth. Radium and radon taken from it are issued to hospitals in needles from “ banks ’’ at the five principal capital cities. The handling of this microscopic fortune is a ticklish job. Even to transfer a tiny particle from one tube to another requires great skill. Unless great care is taken with radium used in treatment it mav be

mislaid or lost, and recovering it is a difficult matter.

To prevent loss a sensitive detector has been devised ; it will point out the presence of a particle at a distance of 10 ft. Once a two-milligram speck was reclaimed from a rubbish tip by this method a week after it was lost.

Laboratory workers are guarded by heavy lead shields when handling it. Continuous exposure to radium rays is injurious to health. Laboratories are ventilated so that the air is changed every six minutes, lest scientists inhale radoncharged air. In certain operations the air is changed every two minutes. The research men undergo regular blood-tests to check up on their reactions to the rays. Yes, handling radium is a risky business. This Jekyll-and-Hyde substance kills as mysteriously as it heals. But such risks will be immeasurably rewarded. Science points out that only a fraction of radium’s miracles has yet been seen.