Polonium years) can be made through the alpha, proton, or deuteron bombardment of lead or bismuth in a cyclotron. Tentatively called "radium F", polonium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, and was named after Marie Curie's native land of Poland (). Poland at the time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition, and did not exist as an independent country. It was Curie's hope that naming the element after her native land would publicize its lack of independence. Polonium may be the first element named to highlight a political controversy. This element was the first one discovered by
Operation Sandstone month. A "Fat Man" core required about of plutonium, of which 21% fissioned. Plutonium production fell off during 1946 due to swelling of the reactors' graphite neutron moderators. This is known as the Wigner effect, after its discoverer, the Manhattan Project scientist Eugene Wigner. These reactors were also required for the production (by irradiation of bismuth-209) of polonium-210, which was used in the initiators, a critical component of the nuclear weapons. Some of bismuth-209 had to be irradiated for 100 days to produce 600 curies of polonium-210, a little over . Because polonium-210 has a half-life of only 138 days,