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Marie and Pierre Curie discovered polonium and radium, leading to the use of radiation to treat cancer patients. Their abandoned laboratory in Paris is highly radioactive and has been compared to Chernobyl. Marie Curie died of radiation-related illness and her personal belongings remain radioactive. France relies heavily on nuclear power but struggles with safe disposal of nuclear waste.
Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, made their names in the 1920s and 1930s when their research led to the discovery of polonium and radium. Their experiments with radioactivity at their laboratory in Arcueil, south of Paris, led to the use of radiation to treat cancer patients. But, boy, did their work make a big mess. Today, Marie Curie’s abandoned laboratory, located in a working-class Parisian suburb, is barricaded behind a concrete wall topped with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and radiation monitors. The radioactivity of the site, which has undergone a series of cleanup efforts, has led some to refer to the site as “Chernobyl on the Seine”.
Half-life of a scientific pioneer:
Curie has won two Nobel prizes: one in physics and one in chemistry. Initially, the discovery of radium led to a dangerous craze in the 1920s in which radium-based products were sold to treat ailments ranging from hair loss to impotence.
Known as the “mother of modern physics,” Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, a condition linked to high levels of radiation. She was 66 years old. Curie’s personal belongings – clothes, furniture, cookbooks and notebooks – are still dangerously radioactive.
Nuclear power supplies about three-quarters of France’s electricity needs, compared to only 20% in the United States. There is still no safe solution for the disposal of nuclear waste stored in France’s 906 nuclear waste sites.
