![]() Like how Daghlian and Slotin weren't just killed by similar accidents involving the same plutonium core: both incidents took place on Tuesdays, on the 21st day of the month, and the men even passed away in the same hospital room. Then there are the weird details that fill in the backdrop of the story. While the deaths of two scientists can't be compared to the untold horrors if the demon core had been used in a third nuclear attack against Japan, it's also easy to understand why the scientists gave it the superstitious name they did. For the second and last time, the demon core was denied its detonation. Instead, the plutonium was melted down and reintegrated into the US nuclear stockpile, to be recast into other cores as necessary. From then on, it was known only as the 'demon core'.īut after everything that had happened, the leftover nuke's time was up too.įollowing the Slotin accident – and the core's resultant increase in radiation levels – plans to use it in Operation Crossroads, the first post-war nuclear explosion demonstrations to commence at the Bikini Atoll a month later, were shelved. They also stopped calling the plutonium core 'Rufus'. New protocols meant an end to 'hands on' criticality experiments, with scientists forced to use remote control machinery to manipulate radioactive cores at a distance of hundreds of metres. The two deadly accidents, only months apart, finally saw real changes take place at Los Alamos. Nine days after the screwdriver slipped, he was gone. (US Department of Defence)Ī press release issued by Los Alamos at the time described his condition as "three-dimensional sunburn". He, and seven others in the room – including a photographer and a security guard – were all exposed to a burst of radiation, although Slotin was the only one to receive a lethal dose, and a greater one than that inflicted on Daghlian.Īfter an initial bout of nausea and vomiting, he at first seemed to recover in hospital, but within days was losing weight, experiencing abdominal pain, and began showing signs of mental confusion. Slotin may have been quick in rectifying his deadly mistake, but again, the damage was already done. Slotin reacted very quickly in flipping the tamper piece off." "The total duration of the flash could not have been more than a few tenths of a second. "The blue flash was clearly visible in the room although it (the room) was well illuminated from the windows and possibly the overhead lights," Schreiber later wrote in a report. The screwdriver slipped and the dome dropped, for an instant fully covering the demon core in a beryllium bubble bouncing too many neutrons back at it.Īnother scientist in the room, Raemer Schreiber, turned around at the sound of the dome dropping, feeling heat and seeing a blue flash as the demon core went supercritical for the second time in the space of a year.ĭiagram of 1946 accident. Slotin was careful to ensure the dome – called a tamper – never completely covered the core, using a screwdriver to maintain a small gap, acting as a crucial valve to enable enough of the neutrons to escape. Like the tungsten carbide bricks before it, the beryllium dome reflected neutrons back at the core, pushing it toward criticality. ![]() Louis Slotin, left, with the first nuclear bomb assembly, Gadget (Los Alamos National Laboratory)Īnd that's exactly what happened to Los Alamos physicist Harry Daghlian. They called it "tickling the dragon's tail", knowing that if they had the misfortune to rouse the angry beast, they would be burned. They even had an informal nickname for the high-risk experiments, one which hinted at the perils of what they did. The trick performed by scientists in the Manhattan Project – of which the Los Alamos Lab was a part – was finding how just how far you could go before that dangerous reaction was triggered. The Los Alamos scientists knew well the risks of what they were doing when they conducted criticality experiments with it – a means of measuring the threshold at which the plutonium would become supercritical, the point where a nuclear chain reaction would unleash a blast of deadly radiation. That mission may have never launched, but the demon core, stranded at Los Alamos, still found an opportunity to kill.
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