Did a WWII nuclear experiment make the U of C radioactive?
Curious City
WBEZ Chicago
4.8 • 642 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2013
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our Geiger counter couldn’t detect any radiation footprint from the site of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. (Whew!) But, was safety first and foremost when scientists ran their WWII nuclear experiment in Chicago?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Tony Swift from Chicago, and this WBEZ podcast is made possible with the support of listeners, like me. |
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| 0:13.5 | And thanks. |
| 0:15.8 | Who is the... |
| 0:16.2 | What is going to be? |
| 0:17.2 | When are the... |
| 0:18.1 | Why is it called? |
| 0:18.7 | How many people... |
| 0:20.0 | I was wondering. How much... How much we're going to be... When we're... Why is it called? How many... How many people... I was wondering. |
| 0:21.2 | I was going to get our... |
| 0:24.6 | What is the... |
| 0:25.6 | What? |
| 0:26.7 | You're listening to the Curious City podcast from WBEZ Chicago. |
| 0:32.5 | You asked the questions. |
| 0:34.3 | We answer them together. |
| 0:35.5 | Thank you. We answer them together. |
| 0:47.3 | The University of Chicago has a special, if that's the right word for it, place in nuclear history. |
| 0:53.4 | It was home to a famous nuclear experiment in the 1940s that paved the way for the atomic bomb. |
| 0:54.2 | But a curious citizen wondered, did this experiment leave the university with a radiation |
| 0:59.2 | problem? |
| 1:00.4 | Producer Katie Mingle has the answer. |
| 1:04.6 | Here's the question, straight from the guy who asked it. |
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