Peter Sullivan, Sophomore
It probably goes without saying, but nuclear cores are very dangerous. Even without being used to create deadly bombs that level cities, the cores themselves still pose a threat to anybody who comes close to one. As such, only trained scientists should be the ones to handle nuclear cores. And when they do, they should handle them delicately and with extreme caution. Unfortunately for a team of physicists in Los Alamos, they did the exact opposite.
Context is needed for this story. On August 6-9, 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an attempt to end the Second World War. However, there were originally meant to be three bombs dropped. However, Japan surrendered to the U.S., and the third nuclear core meant for the bomb was instead sent to a lab in Los Alamos, NM, in order for scientists to study its properties. Throughout the core’s time in Los Alamos, two scientists were killed by its radioactivity. The first was Harry Daghilan, a physicist who made a mistake while handling the core and died from radiation poisoning. The second incident, however, is far more interesting. This time the core was being handled by a team of physicists led by a man named Louis Slotin. Slotin had a reputation for disregarding the rules and being reckless, often seen in his trademark blue jeans and cowboy boots. As such, Slotin dismissed the use of shims to hold the core up while the scientists studied it, and instead opted himself to prop up the core using nothing but the tip of a screwdriver. On May 21, 1946, while giving a demonstration to the other scientists, Slotins’s screwdriver slipped, and the top reflector that he was holding up fell onto the core. Suddenly, blue light flashed from the core and a wave of heat hit Slotin’s skin. The core had gone supercritical, and Slotin quickly flipped the top shell of the container, instantly cooling the core. Had he not done this, it is likely that the core could have detonated, and completely taken Los Alamos off of the map. The core may have been cooled, but the damage was already done. While the core had been supercritical, a wave of radiation had hit all of the scientists, most of all Slotin, who had been standing right in front of it. He died nine days later from radiation poisoning, just like Dr. Daghilan before him. The deaths of these two scientists became national news, and soon the radioactive core was dubbed the “Demon Core” due to it’s volatile history
Many years after the Demon Core incidents, the core was melted down to be used in other nuclear cores, and the story of the two deaths caused by it remains a footnote in the history of nuclear physics. The story of the Demon Core may be interesting, but it is also very sad. Had it not been for one man’s bravado, his loss of life and the potential loss of his colleagues could have been prevented. This story goes to show that the real bane of human progress is not death or time. The real bane of human progress is human pride.