Radioactive Orchestra Turns Atoms Into Music at TEDxGöteborg

I'm a big fan of TEDTalks, and as you can imagine this session holds a special appeal for me. It's a remarkable synthesis of science, art, mathematics, and the mysterious allure of radioactivity as Kollektivet Livet's Radioactive Orchestra turns half-lives into half-notes (among others) live at TEDx in Göteborg, Sweden. Enjoy.

Mae Keane: The Last "Radium Girl"

"You'd better find another job," said Mae Keane's boss at the Waterbury Clock Company of Vermont, when her luminous dial-painting productivity flagged. Mae thought the radium paint was too bitter-tasting, so she refused to use her colleagues' "lip-pointing" technique to create a sharp tip on her paintbrush by placing it in her mouth.

This bit of insubordination may have cost her a well-paid (a reported 8 cents per dial; about $1.00 today) summer factory job in 1926, but it probably saved her life. Back then, Mae's workplace friend Elsie gave her some frightening advice: never have a tooth pulled, because the wound would never heal.

"It was kept a secret in my young age and we didn't know what it was all about," Keane said. "People were dying and we didn't know why." Despite a history of health difficulties likely linked to her radiation exposure as a young woman, 105-year old Ms. Keane is the last surviving "Radium Girl."

For years, Middlebury, Vermont high school freshman Tim Cohn had been interested in his aunt Mae's accounts of working at the Waterbury Clock Company. Now Cohn's research on his aunt, her experiences, and the attempt to cover up what happened to the Radium Girls have made him a finalist in the National History Day contest, to be held at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. this June 10-14. Congratulations, Tim - and best wishes to your aunt Mae!

UPDATE: Tim Cohn was awarded the bronze medal in the Senior Individual Exhibit category at National History Day. Our sincere congratulations!

Here is a small sampling of links dedicated to the remarkable Radium Girls story; not just those who worked at the Waterbury plant, but those at locations around the nation in the 1920's and 30's.

• History Day in Connecticut: check out the May 2 Facebook post for a photo of Tim Cohn and Ms. Mae Keane
• Waterbury Republican-American, Sunday May 13, 2012: "Family Story Becomes Winning Project"
• Hartford Courant (CT) story from January 2004 on the "Radium Girls," featuring an interview with Ms. Keane.
• Hartford Courant story from October 2004 on "Hot Licks," a dance by the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble commemorating the "Radium Girls"' experience [PDF link].
• "The Case of the Living Dead Women," by Len Grossman - an account of radium exposure among the employees of the Radium Dial Company of Ottawa, Illinois
• ChicagoMag.com: The Radium Girls of Ottawa, Illnois (Includes video)
• "The Radium Girls" by Bill Kovarik, recounts the story of the lawsuit against the U.S. Radium Company of Orange, New Jersey, and of Illinois' own "Radium Girls."
• VOA News, September 2011: "Radium Girls Remembered for the Role in Shaping Labor Law"
• Amherst Bulletin (Daily Hampshire News), April 2012: "Arena Civic Theater Shines Light on History of the 'Radium Girls'"

[Image from Hearst Sunday supplement American Weekly, February 28, 1926]

Nuclear TV: Atomic Café

Last Friday I located a VHS copy of Atomic Café (1982, directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin Rafferty) at the Harold Washington library, a feature many call the "atomic version of Reefer Madness". The film compiles a stunning array of archival footage segments - ranging from military training films and Civil Defense tutorials, to 4-H meetings and scenes from atomic bomb testing at the Trinity site, the Bikini Atoll, and Marshall Islands.

Between snippets of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executions, the McCarthy Hearings and hawk Congressmen advocating preemptive military strikes on China during the Korea War, the viewer may come away relieved (and surprised) that the world did in fact manage to survive this utterly hell-bound period of history. In summary, Atomic Café is an engrossing (if somewhat disorganized) depiction of the nature of America's postwar double-edged obsession with the atom, and fortunately it's not out of print, but available for sale in both DVD and VHS formats. Frankly, "surreal" is a bit mild a term to describe views of children riding tricycles in homemade "radiation suits," still-twitching hogs burnt alive to a crisp after being exposed to nuclear blast testing, and Army films designed to reassure servicemembers (and the public) that radiation sickness is a mild, temporary and harmless side effect:

(A young, dark-haired man gazes worriedly into a mirror with a full head of hair, fearful of losing his looks to radiation sickness. As the narrator sanctimoniously reassures him, the man's reflection fades into a healthy example of "horseshoe" male-pattern baldness, supposedly from nuclear fallout)

"they may call you 'baldy' or 'chrome dome' for a while, but in no time you'll be back to your old self again!"

(Bald man dissolves back into his smiling fully-haired self)

No mention of hair falling out by the fistful, vomiting and diarrhea, blistered peeling skin and gangrenous sores anywhere. How did the public swallow all this hook line and sinker? I believe the reason is that the vast majority of audiences didn't know much better back then, and before Watergate and the Kennedy assassination Americans were far more trusting of the government's declarations at face value. Atomic energy promised not only victory over "the Hun," but domestic energy production so cheap it couldn't be metered. One interview with a Cold War-era man shown in Atomic Café underscores the public's general misapprehension of the Nuclear Threat:

Interviewer: "Sir, what do you plan to do, if upon emerging from your family's fallout shelter, you discover that only 5 to 10 percent of the people have survived the attack?"

Man: "Well, I guess that would be fine - with fewer mouths to feed, there would be a lot more to go around for the folks that are left!"

Today, we have easy access to images of the horrific damage radiation can inflict; during wartime, no doubt the government thought better than to alarm a still-innocent populace with the grand scope of the Bomb's potential destruction. "Duck and Cover" made a fine catchy bromide for the masses. Let them build shelters and fishing-sinker-filled "radiation suits"; what they don't know can't hurt them.

Archive.org (part of Wayback Project) has a great collection of downloadable films and videos from our nation's nuclear past, such as Radiation Safety in Nuclear Energy Explorations. You can even download and watch the entire "Duck and Cover" short film from Archive.org's Prelinger Archives Collection; it's one of their most-viewed features.

Atomic Age Artifacts at Oak Ridge's Historical Instrumentation Museum

There's some artifacts from the Atomic Age at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Historical Instrumentation Museum (http://www.orau.org).

Many of the items on display (part of the Professional Training Program at Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee (865-576-3576)) show just how far we've come from viewing radation simply as a beneficent modern boon...get your "glow" on with these artifacts from the Radiant Era:

The strange origins of the modern trefoil radiation symbol.

Who says radioactivity can't be fun and games? Atomic Toys! Including the Atomic Energy Lab for youngsters, and a the Con-Cor™ toy nuclear power plant for your scale model train layout - based on Three Mile Island!

The Nu-Klear Fallout Detector™ - no Cold War era family should have gone without this device (which operates on the principle that ionizing radiation will discharge static electricity-charged items), used by "leaving the detector just outside the fallout shelter exit for five minutes. If the beads have not all fallen to the bottom during that time, "you may risk exposure for a few minutes if you are faced with an emergency that cannot wait another day."

Homer Simpson would be proud: there once was a time when "Radium" meant quality...these days, good luck trying to sell 1940's-vintage Radium Condoms™, Radium "Male Pouches," or Radium Beer™.

Get really, really clean...with Radioactive Soap.

To commemorate Madame Curie's glowing discovery, Broadway composer Jean Schwartz wrote "The Radium Dance" for the 1904 smash hit, Piff! Paff! Pouf!

Irradiated Golf Balls may not help your handicap, but they'll get lots of curious looks.

Vaseline Glass: That Warm, Radioactive Glow!

Ever heard of "Vaseline Glass"? It's a type of collectible antique glassware that's usually clear or slightly milky yellow (like the petroleum jelly it's named for) or yellow-green, but its most unusual characteristsic is that it glows brilliantly under ultraviolet light. That's because the distinctive color is produced by the introduction of uranium salts into the glass melt - and yes, it is radioactive...the higher the Geiger counter reading, the more you're guaranteed of its authenticity.

There's apparently a large cult market for uranium glass pieces, which range in age from the 19th century to the 1930's - but none more recent, probably because radioactivity got such a bad reputation following the advent of the Bomb - after World War II, "radiation chic" fell out of vogue. You might be familiar with the story of Fiestaware™ pottery, certain types of which were crafted with a sightly radioactive ceramic glaze - while hard to find, the 'hot' pieces are hot collectibles, fetching high prices.

One UK website that sells Vaseline Glass offers certification of Geiger counter readings, which range from about 300 cps for a small Czech candle-shaped tray, to a blazing 8400 cps for an English 19th Century wine glass. That goblet must have put quite the kick in your nightcap. One piece is listed at a whopping 22,600 counts-per-second, but I hope that's a typo; if it were really that 'hot', you'd probably have to handle it with lead gloves. Still, I'm not too convinced it's a great idea to keep radiant collectibles like this in one's china cupboards, much less actually use them, although some sources say that the actual radiation doses received from these pieces is not harmful.

A Japanese Vaseline Glass collector's site

(The above beautiful image of glowing vaseline glass appears on Webshots.com, photo by tmwalaska.)

Chernobyl Requiem, Part 1

I'm still not certain what triggered it, but this weekend I started thinking about the Chernobyl disaster. True, it's a strange topic to suddenly become interested in, and I can't pinpoint any precipitating cause, such as a news story or random overheard conversation.

Considering that I had a major obsession with nuclear war back in the mid-1980's, I've been rather nuke-phobia-free for the last twenty years or so. The truth is, when Chernobyl's Reactor 4 exploded on April 26th, 1986, I don't remember being horribly concerned or glued to the television for news on the event. This can probably be explained by the fact that I was 18 at the time, and current events were rarely the stuff of daily obsession for me then. I think the zenith of my nuclear paranoia came in 1984 (Coincidence? We think not!), when my high school classes were periodically interrupted with fallout drills and regular lessons on Civil Defense Emergency evacuation procedure.

You see, I lived in Plattsburgh, New York back then - home to Plattsburgh Air Force Base, which was a prominent Northeast strategic ICBM target. What we were all told back then was basically that when the Russkies finally pressed the Big Red Button (of course, it would always be the Russkies pushing the button first), our immediate response should be to duck down under a table or desk, away from glass windows, place our heads protectively between our knees, and kiss our arses goodbye.

Between Ronald Reagan's regularly televised polemics, the "star wars" defense initiative, the Plattsburgh Yellow Pages' obligatory section on Civil Defense evacuation procedures (complete with maps where we should assemble with a change of warm clothing, canned food, jugs of clean water and prescription medications within ten minutes from when we first heard the alarm sirens, preparing to be bussed to safe locations before the Big One hit PAFB in 30 minutes - that's how long it would take the Russkies' ICBM's to strike our little air base) and songs like '99 Red Balloons' by Nena, 'Distant Early Warning' by Rush, 'Dancing With Tears In Our Eyes' by Ultravox (and many others) blaring sweaty repressed fear with a synth-and-guitar backbeat, I had recurring nightmares about nuclear war at least once a week back then.

Every time I heard a fire station call siren, I thought it might be The Big One. It got to the point that when I saw a flash of lightning to the eastern horizon, for a moment my heart skipped and I wondered whether my 30-minute timer had begun.

Sounds crazy, but those were crazy times. Who new that less than two years later, hell would break loose in the Ukraine, with a near-unstoppable radioactive fire spewing toxins into the Northern hemisphere upper atmosphere for nearly two weeks?

Compounding the Chernobyl event's mystery was the Soviet government's complete media silence about the accident for two days, only admitting to the disaster after a Swedish ambassador implored Moscow for answers why incredibly high levels of radiation were being detected in the Scandinavian nation for no apparent reason. Soon images of the reactor inferno reached the outside world, with accounts of brave, desperate virtually unprotected firefighters and helicopter pilots on suicide missions, struggling to put down the graphite moderator fire; the coverage near operatic in its dangerous grandeur and human pathos, a Götterdammerung of man against the mighty Atom unchained.

This past Sunday I heard a dark, minor-key Russian choral hymn on WBEZ, a Chicago classical music station, and in my mind I played over the images of the Chernobyl cataclysm I'd recently seen and read: the juxtaposition made me well up with emotion. Now, for the past few days' I've been researching the entire Chernobyl incident - historical footage and media coverage, and regular updates prepared by regulatory agencies and multinational consortiums, including those who plan to clean up the entombed reactor and rebuild a more permanent protective shield than the hastily-constructed, crumbling Sarcophagus.

I've discovered that the Chernobyl story is far from over: the monster only sleeps. Authorities in the former Soviet Union publicly decried their population's fear of Chernobyl's fallout as "radiophobia," a mass hysteria with no basis in fact. Unfortunately, when authorities are less than candid about the facts, people will try to read between the lines and fill in the blanks, often creating mass panic. Today, a number of nations are scrambling to raise funds to finally contain and clean up the reactor ruin, to dissect its poisonous innards before it wakes, stirred up by seismic activity, weathering, or other events. This project is called the Shelter Implementation Plan, or SIP [PDF file].

Perhaps the recent look back at Chernobyl is no coincidence. Here in Chicago's Hyde Park, just a few yards from where I work, is a large brass Henry Moore sculpture that looks vaguely like a deformed hollow skull, or a mushroom cloud. It stands at the former site of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field, where on December 2, 1942, a researcher named Enrico Fermi created the world's first controlled self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The sculpture is called "Nuclear Energy", and it marks the place where the power of the atom first emerged in the world of man; if not for this event that took place near where I pass every day, there would have been no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Three Mile Island, and no Chernobyl. As Prometheus stole fire from the gods, so Fermi stole the fire of the atomic pile: nuclear energy may certainly have brought some benefits to humankind, but at a rather steep price with compounded interest.

NOTE: The photo at the top of this post is a rare excellent shot of the destroyed reactor after the fire was put out - but before the Sarcophagus was constructed. I found it on the Chernobyl Tour site, where you can apparently book a tour of the area, including stops near the reactor and the neighboring ghost town of Pripyat. Tourists get special disposable clothing and respirators for the trip, and a complimentary computerized souvenir dosimeter reading (unfortunately, I'm not joking). Sorry, no photos allowed by Ukrainian law, which would explain the relative dearth of good images of the accident site available. However, some photos do appear on the Web, mostly from Ukrainian residents who visit the area and some from foreign press visits, which I'll be offering links to in the forthcoming special farkleberries feature on the Chernobyl accident anniversary. April 26th, 1986.

The photoessay site "Ghost Town", created by a young Ukrainian woman named Elena, has received over 2.5 million hits as of this writing; you'll find dozens of startling, one-of-a-kind images of the Chernobyl region accompanied by Elena's account of her visit. While access is strictly limited, Elena states that her father works for the government, and was able to arrange a permit for her motorcycle visit. Thank you, Walt, for this excellent link.

18 years is nothing in the life of a plutonium atom.