“Is
it radioactive?” That’s not a typical question your spouse asks when
you come home with your winnings from a silent auction. But Joe Ball, of
West Caldwell, New Jersey, wasn't holding a set of steak knives or a
reservation for a time-share in Reno. The innocuous looking mason’s
trowel he won had links back to the very beginning of the atomic age.
While
attending his class-of-1972 reunion for the now defunct Eisenhower
College in Seneca Falls, New York, old items from the college were sold
to the alumni at a silent auction. Ball's trowel sat inside a
well-constructed Plexiglas display case appointed with fine velvet and a
handsome wooden box. A plaque claimed that the trowel was one of three
copies made for Dwight Eisenhower to use on November 8, 1957, to lay the
cornerstone for the new Atomic Energy Commission building in
Germantown, Md.
The
trowel's parts were full of symbolism, the plaque reported. The blade
was made from uranium taken from the CP-1 reactor, which, under Fermi,
achieved the world's first sustained chain reaction at the University of
Chicago on December 2, 1942.
The
handle was crafted from wood taken from Chicago's Stagg Field under
which the reactor was built. The zirconium ferrule and stem came from
the first fuel assembly of the Navy’s revolutionary nuclear powered
attack submarine, the Nautilus.
At
some unspecified date, the AEC and Argonne National Laboratory donated
the trowel to Eisenhower College, where it made its way to Ball – who
won it with a $10 bid.
Many
of his fellow alums were wary the trowel might be radioactive or
doubted it was real. One quipped it would be hard to get the case
through airport security. Ball eventually called the NRC’s Office of
Public Affairs to check out its safety and authenticity. He was
particularly concerned about mysterious black shavings scattered about
inside the display case. OPA knew I’d be interested in the historic
background of the trowel, and so I got involved. First, I directed him
to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to have the
case and shavings surveyed. They found the shavings were uranium, but
detected no radiation coming from the display case.
I
was intrigued. Given the trowel's use and composition, this was an
extraordinary, museum-worthy find. I drove up to Joe's home, took
photos, and went to work researching the trowel's history. I located one
of the other trowels on display at Argonne Lab’s small museum. Its
plaque was virtually identical to Ball's, except that it claimed there
were only two copies. The Eisenhower Library in Kansas, however,
reported that it too owned a trowel from the dedication ceremony. Having
three trowels made sense since Eisenhower was assisted in the ceremony
by AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss and Senator Carl Durham of North Carolina.
But
not all of the details about the trowel were so easily reconciled.
Uranium metal was at a premium in 1942. Why was this uranium not reused
in later reactors? Why did the detailed news accounts of the ceremony
make no mention of the unique features of the trowels? Eisenhower’s
itinerary for the ceremony reported that the president would use a
“silver-plated trowel” to lay the cornerstone. Neither Ball’s nor
Argonne’s trowel was plated. Were they fakes? If so, why did the New
Jersey radiation office confirm that the shavings were uranium? I
realized there was a hidden story behind the one written on the plaques.
. . . Wednesday, we’ll have the rest of the story for you!
Thomas Wellock
NRC Historian
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