Transuranium Facility at HVEC to Have Two Tandems

High Voltage Engineering Corp. is making plans for an installation that will study heavier‐than‐uranium elements. As indicated in the drawing, it would use two tandem Van de Graaff accelerators in series to accelerate heavy ions (up to multiply charged uranium) and hurl them at heavy target nuclei to create atoms heavier than those of the 104 elements observed so far. Particular goals would be atoms ${}_{114}\mathrm{X}^{298}$ and ${}_{126}\mathrm{X}^{310},$ one of which might be doubly magic and have an unusually long half‐life, perhaps as long as 10 years. Intentions are to put the facility into operation at Burlington, Mass., by 1 Jan. 1970. Until other transuranium accelerators are available, HVE would operate the facility for a group of agency‐supported scientists. Thus it would become, for a limited time, a kind of privately operated “national lab.”

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