Every month, Eastern Air Lines had been stripping down, inspecting, and putting back together some 90 of the jet engines that power its planesa five-day, $500 procedure for each engine. Now the price of that safety precaution is being reduced rapidly; Eastern has turned to atomic energy to check its engines' hidden parts. Like doctors examining a patient's bones and internal organs with X rays, mechanics are using radioisotopes to make internal engine pictures without taking the engines apart.
The technique was first used for examining welds and joints in everything from bridges to nuclear submarines. Then Technical Operations, Inc....
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