United States Atomic Energy Commission

The government wasn't exactly sure what this curium stuff might be capable of, but for safety's sake, they wanted to keep it out of the wrong hands by any means necessary.

In this case, that meant Seaborg, at the behest of the Atomic Energy Commission, had to file with the Patent and Trademark Office.

Now, the PTO rejected the claim at first, but not because curium and americium counted as products of nature.

Since elements heavier than plutonium really can't be found in nature, they were considered human artifice, and thus, patent-eligible.

He was famously non-confrontational in political matters, despite working in a highly political field.

Perhaps he took note of how principled opposition was handled.

You might have heard, there's an entire feature film about how poorly the Atomic Energy Commission treated J. Robert Oppenheimer.

I mentioned that the americium and curium created by Fermi's reactor were minuscule amounts.

So here's what I think was going on.

What happened was that when... whoever these guys are, who seem to be above the military, who seem to have, or literally above our government, or most of the governments of the world, that have access to whatever the size of technology was, there were requests, formal requests, that came from the base to the Department of Energy or the Atomic Energy Commission that run the test site, and to the legitimate military at Nellis.

I mean, not even the commander at Nellis could actually go to the facility during this period of time.

And the requests were for them to turn off their radar on Wednesday nights between about dusk, about 6 p.m. and about 1 a.m. Well, of course, the military and the Department of Energy said, you know, no way.