Abstract

Early in the history of the Plutonium Project, months before the first chain reacting pile was built, it was realized that both fast and slow neutrons would leak from any operating pile of finite dimensions and thus constitute radiation hazards. Fast neutrons, of course, were not a new radiobiological agent in 1942; reports of their various biological effects had been accumulating since 1935. With slow neutrons, however, there had been no radiobiological experience, because the earlier sources of neutrons, such as cyclotrons, had not been suitable for such investigations. Certain it was that slow neutrons would have radiobiological action, because it was known that slow neutrons were captured by and would react with the nuclei of many of the kinds of atoms found in tissues; each of these nuclear reactions was known to produce ionizing particles by some means, direct or indirect, and in many cases a significant fraction of the ionizing energy of these particles was certain to be absorbed in the nearby tiss...

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