At the end of the war it became apparent that the teamwork of government and scientific institutions, which had been so effective in wartime work, must somehow be perpetuated in order to insure the continued progress of nuclear science in peace time. The enormous expense of the tools needed to pursue the next steps in this research -- nuclear reactors and high energy accelerators -- and the shortage of scientifically trained personnel pointed towards the establishment of a cooperative laboratory. Such a laboratory, using government funds, could carry out a comprehensive research program that would benefit the many interested research groups throughout the country. As a result of the wartime programs under the Manhattan District, centers of research in nuclear science were already active at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, at Los Alamos in New Mexico, at the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and at the Argonne Laboratory in Chicago. No analogous nuclear research laboratories, however, had developed in the Northeast, and since so much of the nation's scientific talent and industrial activities are concentrated in the northeastern states, it was proposed that a new laboratory be established near New York City. As a result of this plan, …

The heaviest of the known elements is curium, which was recently discovered by Seaborg and his associates. This new element can be produced by the alpha particle transmutation of plutonium by the following reaction: {sub 94}Pu{sup 239} + {sub 2}He{sup 4} {yields} {sub 96}Cm{sup 242} + {sub 0}N{sup 1} This isotope of curium is radioactive and decays by the emission of an alpha particle to form plutonium 238 which, in turn, is also radioactive. Curium 242 has a half-life of 150 days, and its radioactive daughter, plutonium 238, has a half-life of 50 years. This isotope of plutonium decays by the emission of an alpha particle to form uranium 234 which has a half-life of 233,000 years. Shortly after the organization of the Atomic Energy Project, it became apparent that formidable problems would be presented as the result of the release of nuclear energy. One of the most urgent of these was the hazard presented by the production of large quantities of the radio-elements created by the fission of uranium and the coincidental formation of neptunium and plutonium. In an attempt to evaluate the potential danger presented by these radio-elements from the chain reacting pile, a large series of metabolic …

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