Science: Hottest Hot Spot

Nearly every up & coming laboratory now has a hot spot where radioactive material is handled with gingerly precaution. Hottest spot of this sort in any non-Government lab is the bottom of a water-filled tank at California's Stanford Research Institute, where a rod and four nesting cylinders of radioactive cobalt glow with a weird blue light. Together they weigh only 10 Ibs. and they cost only $22,500, but they give off as much radiation (4,500 curies) as $80 million worth of radium. If their shielding water were to leak away, they would give a man a fatal dose of radiation in...

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