Atomic heart book1/9/2024 ![]() It was also the most efficient in the desirable size range, was potentially more reliable because of its need for few seals and bearings, and required the least power. The agency had decided that Westinghouse’s Stirling engine-which operated by the cyclic compression and expansion of air at different temperatures, powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator-was the better-understood and better-developed option for converting heat to work. And the radioisotope thermoelectric generator was a solution looking for a problem as industry sought applications beyond spacecraft and remote navigation beacons.Īfter a competitive bidding process, the Westinghouse Electric Co received a contract from the AEC in 1971 to develop their proposed radioisotope-powered heart system. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. ![]() Kolff Collection, Special Collections, J. Mott lecture, “Nuclear Power for the Artificial Heart” (17 October 1973), folder 3, box 168, MS 654, Willem J. Chief of the AEC’s thermal applications branch, William Mott, explained: “We were always on the alert for new problems to match with our solutions.” 3 3. AEC chairman Glenn Seaborg was engaged in developing isotopic power units the most common of them was the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which produces electricity from the heat of radioactive decay. The corporation hoped to tap into funding from both agencies. The Thermo Electron Engineering Corp of Boston proposed a radioisotope power source both to the National Heart Institute (NHI), later renamed the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), and to the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). For researchers, the two largest challenges were to build a mechanical pump that was biocompatible-that is, one that a human body could tolerate and that did not damage red blood cells or induce blood clotting-and to incorporate a mechanism for safely and efficiently driving the pump. ![]() Creager, Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine, U. Their timing was ideal, given the recent establishment of the Artificial Heart Program in 1964, at the National Institutes of Health, which sustained the potential and promise of early yet crude device research of the 1950s and early 1960s and the federal government’s support for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. It was industrial scientists, not academic ones, who first proposed exploring radioisotopes as energy sources for artificial hearts. One federally funded project was the development of atomic hearts to save the increasing number of Americans dying of heart failure during that period. ![]() Large-scale, federally funded science and technology projects, such as the Apollo program and the Superconducting Super Collider, proliferated during the 1960s and 1970s, bolstered by enthusiastic reports from the scientific community with assertions of future benefits for Americans. A life-saving technology for one person has become a threat to society at large. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police begin a manhunt, while the National Heart Institute, government officials, and emergency-services personnel discuss contingency plans in the event that Pu contaminates the area. But then Gray is kidnapped by a madman who intends to remove and spray the heart’s hundred grams of Pu into the air, exposing thousands of people to dangerous levels of radiation. Both Bradfield and Gray enjoy their newfound celebrity as guest speakers describing their experience with the radioisotope-powered artificial heart, and Bradfield goes on to implant more hearts with similar success. His patient, Henry Gray, survives the experimental procedure, makes an impressive recovery, and is discharged from the hospital to resume his life. It is a story of William Bradfield’s daring efforts to save the life of a dying patient through the implantation of a mechanical heart powered by plutonium. Published in 1978, Heartbeat is a medical disaster novel by Eugene Dong and Spyros Andreopoulos that foretells the perils of an atomic heart.
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