In the event of war every particle of radium would be rushed to the nearest well, and kept there except when being used for treatment.
The wells will be-of steel and will have walls of reinforced concrete several feet thick.
In Britain there are about 120 grammes of radium, valued at £840,000.
The physicist of Liverpool Radium Institute told the "Sunday Dispatch": Though our supply in this hospital is only 1.6 grammes—worth about £12,000—it might, if scattered by a bomb, prove fatal to about 160,000 people. One hundredth of a milli-gramme, if inhaled, would probably be a fatal dose.
At present. radium is kept in safes lined with six inches of lead. which in turn are stored in a room with lead-lined walls.
These would not provide adequate protection from a close exploding bomb.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.