Polonium initiator was classified until the 1960s. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project funded human experiments using polonium on five people at the University of Rochester between 1943 and 1947. The people were administered between of polonium to study its excretion. Polonium is a very rare element in nature because of the short half-life of all its isotopes. Po, Po, and Po appear in the decay chain of U; thus polonium can be found in uranium ores at about 0.1 mg per metric ton (1 part in 10), which is approximately 0.2% of the abundance of radium. The amounts
Project Y chemistry and metallurgy of radioactive polonium was directed by Charles Allen Thomas of the Monsanto Company and became known as the Dayton Project. Testing required up to 500 curies per month of polonium, which Monsanto was able to deliver. The whole assembly was encased in a duralumin bomb casing to protect it from bullets and flak. The ultimate task of the metallurgists was to determine how to cast plutonium into a sphere. The brittle α phase that exists at room temperature changes to the plastic β phase at higher temperatures. Attention then shifted to the even more malleable δ phase