Science: Magic Fire

Meteorologists need to know about weather conditions in the most inaccessible parts of the earth, but in many such places manned stations are almost impossible to maintain. The U.S. Weather Bureau and the Atomic Energy Commission now propose an automatic weather station that gets all the electricity and heat it needs from strontium 90, a long-lived radioisotope.

Strontium 90 is the notorious element in fallout that masquerades as calcium and lodges in human bones. But it is plentiful in the byproducts of plutonium manufacture, and the AEC’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, taking careful precautions, decided to use it. It was converted into strontium titanate, which is chemically inert and virtually insoluble, then formed into eleven pellets and welded into a three-layer jacket. All this had to be done by remote control from behind thick radiation shields—or the operators would not have lived to do more work.

Heated by 17,500 curies (a measure of radioactivity), the little cylinder acts as a magic, almost eternal fire, producing 100 watts of heat. Surrounding thermocouples yield five watts of electricity, enough to supply all power needs. Waste heat is regulated so that it keeps the station’s electronic works at a steady 70°.

With the help of the Canadian Department of Transport, the automatic weather station will be placed this month on uninhabited Graham Island in the Canadian Arctic. It is expected to work unattended for at least two years, transmitting by radio every three hours the temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction and velocity at its bleak location. Should a polar bear or an arctic fox come sniffing around, it will not be damaged by radiation. The magic fire will be underground and shielded from the world by three-quarters of a ton of lead.