Month: March 2009

Plutonium in a bottle

Modern(ish)

Clean-up personnel excavating the burial trenches at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington found the jug of historic Pu-239 in a concrete-lined safe.

Established during the Manhattan project in 1943, Hanford was the first full-scale production site for plutonium. Hanford plutonium was used in the world’s first nuclear bomb test and in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

In order to determine its age, the researchers analysed the different forms, or isotopes, of plutonium and uranium in the sample. They found it had been separated from the spent fuel in 1944.

In order to determine which reactor had produced the sample, they compared plutonium isotope ratios from the contents of the bottle against technical data from nuclear research reactors that were operating at the time the sample was made.

Their results strongly suggested the plutonium was manufactured at the prototype X-10 reactor at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, which began operating in 1943, a year after the Manhattan Project was authorised.

Researchers then found old shipping documents confirming transfers of spent reactor fuel from Oak Ridge to Hanford in 1944.

The only earlier sample of plutonium is from 1941 and is currently in the Smithsonian museum. This jug of radiation is going to stay with gummit scientists, though.

Psych!

Social policy, Treasures

So it turns out that the top bidder for the rat and rabbit was a Chinese art collector doing it out of patriotism with no intention to actually pay for the bronzes.

A Chinese art collector identified himself on Monday as the winning bidder in last week’s Paris auction for two sculptures looted from Beijing in the 1800s but said that, as a patriot, he had no intention of paying. […]

Cai Mingchao, a collector and adviser to a private foundation in China that seeks to retrieve looted treasures, said he successfully bid for the items which sold for 15 million euros ($20 million) each at an auction for the art collection of late designer Yves Saint Laurent.

The private foundation mentioned is the one that filed suit to prevent the sale, The Association for the Protection of Chinese Art in Europe.

No word yet from Christie’s on what they intend to do about it. Pierre Bergé says he’ll just keep them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they called up the next highest bidder and offered them to him.

( :hattip: a loyal reader.)

Interesting side note: Victor Hugo vigorously protested the looting of the Summer Palace back in 1860 when it happened. A Chinese official has even cited Hugo in a press conference in an appeal to France to right this historic wrong.

Hugo wrote this in a letter to a French captain. See the link above for the full excerpt.

“One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly.

“Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.

“We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.

“Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.

“The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.”

Lovely pics of Iraq National Museum “reopening”

Ancient, Looting, Museums, Social policy, Treasures

Last Tuesday, the National Museum in Baghdad had its ceremonial reopening, and judging from the pictures, it’s a beautiful place.

They even have a hall specifically devoted to artifacts that were looted in 2003 and returned by other governments or recovered by police/military action. Very trendy.

One problem, though: it’s not actually open for business in the usual sense of the term.

Visitors can’t drop by, pay an entrance fee and tour the collection. Few are allowed past the guards at the surrounding gates, and inside the gates, there are other checkpoints.

Even inside the building, visitors are told that it’s impossible for them to see the exhibits without written permission from the museum director, who’s simply too busy to write such notes.

If she does find time, the director will say that unless another museum official is available as a guide, it’s impossible to tour the displays. They have been cobbled together from artifacts that were locked in storage when the museum was looted after the invasion.

The Ministry of Culture actually boycotted the re-opening over security concerns. They don’t think it’s safe enough for antiquities to go on display yet, nor for people to view them.

So basically it’s a bit of a PR front to make it feel like the country is getting back to normal. It’ll be months, maybe even years before the museum is ready for the public.

P.S. – AP’s allergy to political reality strikes again. Notice there’s no mention whatsoever of the fake opening in the AP story, whereas the McClatchy story lays it all out.