After the seminar at Eindhoven the director of research handed Max Delbruck a piece of metallic uranium the size of a finger. Max put it in his pocket, returning with it to Germany. From the point of view of radioactivity, carrying the piece was quite harmless because the radiation was very weak. But the incident shows how informally such matters were handled in those days [1936]
Fischer & Lipson: Thinking About Science
So one day I went by train to Manchester & was taken by car to the Blue John Cavern.
Down I went over slippery ladders & through narrow, muddy passages to a slightly larger cavity where, incongruously, there was a laboratory table with a lot of glassware on it, bulbs & tubes & stopcocks, rather like the equipment I had used in Hamburg.
That was the plant for 'milking' the radium, for extracting the radon & compressing it into a small glass capillary, no longer than half an inch. At Oliphant's request the radium had not been milked for a whole week so that a large amount of radon had accumulated.
Less than an hour later, when the local technician had done the work for me, I walked out with my little suitcase containing a heavy block of lead at the centre of which was this tiny capsule full of radon, equivalent in radiation to about ¾ of a gramme of radium.
Any safety officer today would shudder at the thought that I walked out with that thing, protected by only a couple of inches of lead, & that I travelled within a few feet of that radiation source first by car & then by train. Today that would be considered an unacceptable radiation hazard both to myself & to other people in the compartment
Otto Frisch: What Little I Remember
I was looking for those quotes a little while ago when there was a scare about radiation leaks, but only managed to track them down at the weekend.
The second is doubly interesting to me because the Blue John Cavern is local – a popular visitor attraction. I assume there are no remaining traces of the wartime activities.
