Early Nuclear Research and Human Radiation Experiments

Exclusive 2019 Update: VICTORY AT THE VA – West LA Veterans Administration master plan protects old nuclear dump from development

Left – UCLA Reactor:

[October 16, 2017 – While EnviroReporter.com‘s reporting on the Brentwood biomedical nuclear dump partially under Barrington Dog Park stopped then-President George W. Bush’s $4 billion plan to privatize and develop VA land, nothing has been remediated.]

In August of 1958, plans are completed for UCLA to receive an accident-proof nuclear reactor worth $203,350 from the Atomic Energy Commission. UCLA is one of the first universities in the country to receive the 10-kilowatt Argonaut reactor, which will run for more than 10 years on three kilograms of Uranium-235 loaned to UCLA by the AEC.

In March of 1981, the Argonaut research reactor is up for relicensing, while at the same time it comes under attack from a campus-community anti-nuclear group called Committee to Bridge the Gap. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently denied the group’s petition to close down the reactor because of perceived safety risks.

In June of 1984, it is announced that UCLA will decommission its training and research reactor and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been notified that UCLA will withdraw its application to renew the operating license for the reactor. The reactor operated safely from startup in 1960 through shutdown on Feb. 3, 1984 under pressure from Committee to Bridge the Gap.

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Positron emitter detector used to detect brain tumors at Brookhaven National Laboratory (circa 1962).

Joseph Hamilton, left, conducting one of the first isotope metabolism studies during the 1930s. The study took place at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory). The test subject on the right is drinking a "radiation cocktail."

A mobile whole body counter (circa 1966)

Respiration analysis using radioactive tracers at Donner Laboratory (circa 1968).

Brookhaven Low-Level Whole Body Counting Facility (circa 1968).

Radiation administrator at Donner Laboratory releasing gas from a carbon-14 inhalation apparatus in a metabolic study.

A Richland, Washington child participating in a program to measure radiation typically present in the body. This 1960s project took place at Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

A positron emitter detector at Brookhaven National Laboratory (circa 1965).

Early use of a Geiger-Muller counter to test thyroid function at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

A conventional whole body counter (circa 1964).

A counter being used at Los Alamos to measure plutonium in the lung.

A horizontal rotational scanner used to detect the quantity and distribution of radiation in the body.

A patient prepared for treatment with charged atomic particles at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

A whole body radiation counter at Los Alamos (circa 1958).

A whole body counter at Berkeley Donner Laboratory (circa 1964). Such counters were used human radiation tracer studies and for measuring AEC worker radiation exposure.

The automatic contouring system was used at Argonne Research Cancer Hospital to determine how much radiation will penetrate to cancer tumors.

Production of isotopes at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (circa 1946).

A patient under a positron camera. The camera was a diagnostic tool developer at Berkeley's Donner Laboratory to photograph radioactive tracer concentrations. Unlike a whole body scanner, this device photographs a single, specific area of the body.

Separating radioactive carbon from material bombarded in Oak Ridge nuclear reactor.

Measuring beta radiation from a sample of phosphorus-32 at Oak Ridge.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory workers checking for radioactive contaminants (circa 1950).

Aerial view of the Oak Ridge X-10 facility which served as a pilot for the Hanford plutonium production reactors (circa 1945). After World War II, the facility produced isotopes for national distribution.

Measuring intentional radiation release at the Idaho experimental dairy farm (circa 1964).

Checking radioactivity after a Controlled Environmental Radioiodine Test (CERT) in 1966.

Measuring intentional radiation release at the experimental Idaho dairy (circa 1964).

Early method of handling radioactive sources at Los Alamos.

A facility at Hanford for treating persons injured by embedded radioactive particles (circa 1967). In this shielded operating cell, a mock patient is flanked by a surgeon, right, and a radiation monitor, left.