@BoCo8888 its referred as "tickling the dragons tail", also as "don't push your luck", because the test was to see the neutron count from the core to see how long it would take to reach critical, this was actually the second test the first also resulted in a death and so the core was referred to as the "demon core".
What I have never understood about these two accidents is how "non-geek" both scientists behaved, any regular geek would have loved to design and build a cool test apparatus to do the experiments safely. At Los Alamos during this time they would just have had to ask and they would have gotten anything they wanted. Television cameras and CRT's existed at this time. I bet there were engineers at Los Alamos who were chomping at the bit to do it, but were prevented by the physicists in charge.
@Blahblobify I know this video is not accurate, it seems like they wanted to time compress the actions taken after the excursion, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) covers both accidents in detail in their online museum.
He was a true hero, had I went into there with a firearm, I would have shot him in the chest and head, that would have been the best I could do for him. I was unable to cure him.
why did he throw the other workers possibly contaminated chalk to mark their positions, and possibly, to re-irradiate themselves. ? Beggars belief...but it is just a film,TWMF
This is called ghetto rigging a nuclear reaction. now just hook up my speakers to the demon core and we out homie. i luv the blue glow its like neons for my ride.
I see you use MeV AND inches. I have always wondered why the Americans never got to use the Metric system. Using such an outdated and absurd system of measurement is ridiculous in the scientific community. Just stick to the SI.
@nukewarfare2: Everything about how U235 reacted when it approached criticality (including supercriticality, tested in the nuclear reactors) matched exactly their predictions. It would have been a major, major theoretical rewrite if the gun hadn't operated just as it did.Secondly, U-235 was extremely difficult to come by, worse than Pu. BTW, that was the last gun type weapon "tested" until the famous keyhole grable test where they fired a gun type weapon from an Annie atomic cannon.
@nukewarfare2: That had already been made plain with two implosion bomb "tests" under their belt. That wasn't what they were after at that point. The core, away from the reflective beryllium, was sub-critical.
A large burst of gamma radiation on the order of 5-6 Sieverts...enough to kill everyone in the room had it continued. As it was, only Slotin absorbed the bulk of it.
@americanjedi77 I don't think it would have exploded, I've read a certain amount about this stuff on Wikipedia. From what I've read, the Plutonium core would need to be extremely compressed with conventional explosives. Had he not separated the halves here, my guess is that it would have simply continued to release ionizing radiation poisoning more people. Louis Slotin assembled the trinity core and called himself an atomic bomb "putter togetherer". This same core killed another scientist.
@TheJomogogo I googled but I don't think I found the correct page. The first link was to a CDC article about ARS. I did see a pic of a woman with the imprint of her clothes burned into her skin as apparently white clothes reflect more radiation than dark ones. She had a neat little dress pattern burned right into her skin.
@TheJomogogo I've checked up on the "demon core" that killed both Slotin and Harry Daghlian since I seen this. Apparently, Slotin was a maverick. One person said he once stripped to his shorts and dove to the bottom of a reactor to adjust an experiment rather than wait to do it safely. Also, he chose not to use shims that were made after the Daghlian accident. I seen a pic online somewhere of Harry Daghlian's badly radiation burned right hand. The dragon packs a wallop.
2 stories. I remember reading a story called "The Strange Death of Louis Slotin" in high school, I think that this is what this vid is trying to depict. If I remember correctly Slotin said "the screwdriver slipped". My chem prof in college said he once worked for the NRC. He said he once peered through a window a guy putting radioactive solution in a stainless beaker. He said the room lit up blue. They guy walked out and said "I'm dead" 2 days later he was.
How long could one live after this? Also, there seems to be MANY exceptionally
bright people who have commented here..can anyone tell me with a straight face that Chernobyl (spelling may be wrong) only resulted in 18 fatalities? Some report on the web here actually had that number - I'll try to link it. Seems to me any "containment" worker who went to that site had a 90%+ probability of dying promptly after an hour or so working there. Thanks everyone look forward to any replies :-)
Depends on many factors. But, in the actual "tickling the dragon's tail" accident with Louis Slotin, he lived for 9 days. An accident before that with the same core involving Harry Daghlian, he lived for 25 days.
"can anyone tell me with a straight face that Chernobyl (spelling may be wrong) only resulted in 18 fatalities?"
Where did you get that?
As for an official count, you can't rely on that considering the source (Soviet Union) and what they tended to do to with such data to avoid embarrassment and political fallout (no pun intended) from the international community. However, thousands probably have and, if still alive, will die over time from increased cancer risk due to exposure.
@Watcher3223: the stats I cited were from the multi-government commission which looked into the accident. It was under the auspices of the UN. Granted the Soviet Union had paranoia problems, it is exceedingly difficult to hide huge numbers of deaths. Greenpeace (of course) says the casualties were 250,000, but they have no data to back it up; it is a guess.
@puncheex "Greenpeace (of course) says the casualties were 250,000, but they have no data to back it up; it is a guess."
And, considering the source (Greenpeace), their estimates may have to be taken with a grain of salt; they have an agenda which can provide motivation to skew numbers to prove their point of view rather than merely presenting the truth.
"Seems to me any "containment" worker who went to that site had a 90%+ probability of dying promptly after an hour or so working there."
Wouldn't be surprising considering the area would be quite hot as the explosion after the reactor blew its top spread radioactive material over a wide area.
As an aside, this is why modern reactors use a containment structure. Conversely, the inability to have a containment are why RBMK reactors, like Chernobyl, are especially dangerous.
@ChristopherSaindon: Actually, Chernobyl resulted in 56 fatalities. There is estimated to have been an additional 4000 from health problems, but they cannot be identified. There were several thousands of thyroid cancers, but they are the most treatable cancer, and those deaths are in the 56. The thought there would be a hump of solid cancers, but the hump never appeared. The cancer & birth defect rates are same as before the accident. Stats from UN. See wiki, "Chernobyl disaster".
... There's not much doubt a lot of the cleanup workers had their lives shortened somewhat, but I have no stats on that. As an example, the naval workers at Crossroads were exposed to quite a bit of radiation. The estimate there is that on the average each sailor lost about 3 months of lifetime, but "on the average" has a very odd meaning in that context.
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
"this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death."
The person depicted in the movie was not Louis Slotin but was a fictional character by the name of Michael Merriman.
You are correct that this incident is fiction and based on two criticality accidents with the same plutonium core, one resulting in the death of Harry Daghlian and the other resulting in the death of Louis Slotin.
This scene dramatized the accident with Mr. Slotin.
Slotin reported he felt a sour taste in his mouth and a burning sensation in his left hand...not so much because of heat, but probably because his nerves were hyperstimulated from the bombardment of gamma radiation.
Aside from the fact that you can't pick up Pu238 at your local Wal-mart, you can't just put explosives around two hemis and just blow them up...you have to shape the charges, they have to be timed to detonate (within nanoseconds...you need kryton switches for that kind of accuracy), plus a whole slew of other details...otherwise, you just have a rather dirty conventional bomb.
@theman2160: They weren't investigating the Pu itself. They were investigating tamper materials, explosives, all the ingredients. Each one has a characteristic absorption/reflection coefficient with neutrons, and a lot of that data was gathered empirically, as they had no supercomputers for sims.
@zanzoken123 The core could have gone supercritical, which means it could have exploded or turned into a mass of molten radioactive. Maybe a little of both. Any way you cut it though, it falls under Bad Things.
@Falconer13X: It would have become a very hot (temp and rad) puddle, technically known as a fizzle. To get an explosion requires that thecghain reaction be ramped up very fast. The core without the reflectors around it is not itself critical; as a puddle it would be even less so. Pure plutonium is non-radioactive enough to be handled (plated in some metal to avoid poisoning), but once it went through an activation like that it would become exceedingly radioactive.
Hey this exact thing happened to me a couple of days ago...but in my case i now posses the power to microwave anything i want whenever i want.....ping!!!
@capitaltrading This was in today's (march 25th, 2010's) top article on Listversedotcom, "10 Famous Incidences of Death by Radiation," and this movie was mentioned. That poor bastard! :(
@lewisner: No, but they knew pretty well what was what. Parsons (USN) did some of these experiments before Trinity, and in one case had a near critical pile of Pu bricks when he leaned over it and saw the meter go off the scale. He scattered the bricks with his hand, but received a week's worth of rems. He forgot that water (i.e., his body) reflects neutrons and thus increased the flux.
I'm a physics student as well, have talked to people who worked in the Manhattan project. Of course this was absurdly dangerous. However, they felt they were in a desperate race to build the bomb before the Nazis, and were willing to forgo most safety precautions in the name of speed, much like soldiers on the front were. The Manhattan project personnel suffered fewer casualties than an army unit that size would have in Europe, and they got the bomb built in time.
@oyrp70: The demon core deaths happened after Japan surrendered, in late 45 and spring of 46. The core was used in crossroads able in July of 46. There was a lot of political and interpersonal things going on, which may have weighed on the workers. No excuse for sloppiness, which is what this was.
It's a combination of the Slotin and Daghlian accidents, which happened in '45 and '46. There was no chance of an explosion - the impact velocities were far too low. In the bomb itself, the explosion was triggered by 10 tonnes of plastic explosive which compressed the core to half its' diameter. And I thought Chernenkov radiation was more purple, but I'm just nit picking now. ;-)
Because the movie was intended as a historical drama and not a documentary, some changes were made for the sake of having a more dramatic story. In this case, details from two seperate accidents were almagamated into one scene to allow one of the main characters to have a heroic death.
The spilled coffee cup is purely invention, Slotin was levering the demon core open with a screwdriver and he just slipped allowing the top hemisphere to drop.
Actually in the film Cusack is playing Michael Merriman, but in reality the accident happened to Louis Slotin. Daghlians accident was due to him dropping an absorbion brick onto the core.
Look up 'Demon Core' on wikipedia, it describes both accidents.
very small nuclar explosion less than 100 tons of tnt, because there is no implosion. Chain reaction starts and IMMEDIATELY destroy plutonium hemispheres. Aftermatch - very high plutonium contamination.
No, no explosion at all. Because of the so called "prompt burst", the plutonium is getting hot; the material is expanding slowly and the overall chainreaction becomes "subcritical" - no explosion... but nevertheless very reactive (and thus radioactive). He had to pull it away, to rescue the rest of his comrads... otherwise they would have dies as he did 9 days later.
They were testing to see what happened when you approached a critical mass on the plutonium sphere. It taught them how to control nuclear reactions. When the sphere closed it started a self sustaining chain reaction. When he knocked the sphere over the reaction stopped, but he got a fatal dose of radiation, he ended up dying a few days later.
@stepbackfool: In real life, they were testing different tamping materials. Each one has different relection/absorption characteristics, and they were searching for materials that would enhance the yield, or be more easily worked, etc.
wheres the tickle part
BoCo8888 5 months ago
@BoCo8888 its referred as "tickling the dragons tail", also as "don't push your luck", because the test was to see the neutron count from the core to see how long it would take to reach critical, this was actually the second test the first also resulted in a death and so the core was referred to as the "demon core".
DannyShaubolo 5 months ago
What I have never understood about these two accidents is how "non-geek" both scientists behaved, any regular geek would have loved to design and build a cool test apparatus to do the experiments safely. At Los Alamos during this time they would just have had to ask and they would have gotten anything they wanted. Television cameras and CRT's existed at this time. I bet there were engineers at Los Alamos who were chomping at the bit to do it, but were prevented by the physicists in charge.
monkeyboy4746 6 months ago
@monkeyboy4746
Dude google it, the two incidents this scene is based on are fascinating history.
Yes, they made mistakes, but not as simple as this Hollywood Movie. We owe a tremendous debt to the men and women that built The Bomb.
Blahblobify 5 months ago
@Blahblobify I know this video is not accurate, it seems like they wanted to time compress the actions taken after the excursion, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) covers both accidents in detail in their online museum.
monkeyboy4746 5 months ago
...Really? You're going to set your coffee cup right there on top of that clipboard of data? .....really?
BevoBill31 7 months ago
He was a true hero, had I went into there with a firearm, I would have shot him in the chest and head, that would have been the best I could do for him. I was unable to cure him.
RawheadRex72 8 months ago
Oh Hi Mark.
casdebom2 9 months ago
why did he throw the other workers possibly contaminated chalk to mark their positions, and possibly, to re-irradiate themselves. ? Beggars belief...but it is just a film,TWMF
Anyone else noticed this anomaly ??
themanfromwem 9 months ago
@themanfromwem the chalk nor anything else in the room was contaminated. This was an exposure event.
... and besides, even if it was contaminated, they all just got blasted with a lethal dose, so what's a few extra rem at that point.
BevoBill31 7 months ago
@BevoBill31 Thank you Bill, Good point. TMFW
themanfromwem 7 months ago
Fortunately Slotin's death wasn't in vain, thanks to his work they managed to make bombs that could kill even more people. What a hero.
kapsi 10 months ago
@kapsi
Stotin's death bought about greater understanding on the effect of acute radiation syndrome.
TET2005 7 months ago
They should have worn lead vests, lead gloves, not used a screwdriver.
StarcraftAlphaBeta 11 months ago
@capitaltrading I'm pretty sure you didn't see the Demon Core, considering it was used in the Able detonation in 1946.
Mrslippyfists 11 months ago 3
This is called ghetto rigging a nuclear reaction. now just hook up my speakers to the demon core and we out homie. i luv the blue glow its like neons for my ride.
Millhouse420ify 11 months ago
@GammyGoose And always keep the plutonium out of the tungsten carbide-lined drawer!
funkgerat 11 months ago
@capitaltrading
I see you use MeV AND inches. I have always wondered why the Americans never got to use the Metric system. Using such an outdated and absurd system of measurement is ridiculous in the scientific community. Just stick to the SI.
casdebom2 11 months ago
@capitaltrading This tragic event really did happen to Dr Louie Slotin who recieved a lethal 1000 rads and died nine days later
laurence132 11 months ago
The demon core made it into a live bomb, "Able" from Operation Crossroads. watch?v=OK9z7_eKWsE for the footage
joelb79 1 year ago
scary as hell
xn117 1 year ago
i never work without heavy lead gloves
jeuxpclol101 1 year ago
when I saw the title of this video, I though it might have been something that belonged at redtube...
ImperiousViking 1 year ago 2
@nukewarfare2: Everything about how U235 reacted when it approached criticality (including supercriticality, tested in the nuclear reactors) matched exactly their predictions. It would have been a major, major theoretical rewrite if the gun hadn't operated just as it did.Secondly, U-235 was extremely difficult to come by, worse than Pu. BTW, that was the last gun type weapon "tested" until the famous keyhole grable test where they fired a gun type weapon from an Annie atomic cannon.
puncheex 1 year ago
Comment removed
puncheex 1 year ago
@nukewarfare2: That had already been made plain with two implosion bomb "tests" under their belt. That wasn't what they were after at that point. The core, away from the reflective beryllium, was sub-critical.
puncheex 1 year ago
@americanjedi77: Meltdown and an excessively radioactive building. Major problem cleaning it up.
puncheex 1 year ago
@zogetaur
Plutonium, not Uranium...that was mention earlier in the movie...from Oak Ridge.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@GammyGoose
Except that was Plutonium, not uranium...Uranium of that amount wouldn't reach criticality that quickly.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@americanjedi77
A large burst of gamma radiation on the order of 5-6 Sieverts...enough to kill everyone in the room had it continued. As it was, only Slotin absorbed the bulk of it.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@clintonearlwalker: That was a picture taken by the doctors and technicians in Japan. The burns were from the Hiroshima bomb.
Look up "demon core" in wiki; follow the links.
puncheex 1 year ago
@capitaltrading
Power of hindsight, plus Slotin was a bit of a risktaker.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@americanjedi77 I don't think it would have exploded, I've read a certain amount about this stuff on Wikipedia. From what I've read, the Plutonium core would need to be extremely compressed with conventional explosives. Had he not separated the halves here, my guess is that it would have simply continued to release ionizing radiation poisoning more people. Louis Slotin assembled the trinity core and called himself an atomic bomb "putter togetherer". This same core killed another scientist.
clintonearlwalker 1 year ago
@clintonearlwalker
That's correct. The other scientist, Daghlian, died in pretty much the same manner. Slotin was known as a risktaker anyway.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@capitaltrading it was war dude. different philosophy of life and death.
DoBrigh 1 year ago
@TheJomogogo I googled but I don't think I found the correct page. The first link was to a CDC article about ARS. I did see a pic of a woman with the imprint of her clothes burned into her skin as apparently white clothes reflect more radiation than dark ones. She had a neat little dress pattern burned right into her skin.
clintonearlwalker 1 year ago
Comment removed
puncheex 1 year ago
@TheJomogogo I've checked up on the "demon core" that killed both Slotin and Harry Daghlian since I seen this. Apparently, Slotin was a maverick. One person said he once stripped to his shorts and dove to the bottom of a reactor to adjust an experiment rather than wait to do it safely. Also, he chose not to use shims that were made after the Daghlian accident. I seen a pic online somewhere of Harry Daghlian's badly radiation burned right hand. The dragon packs a wallop.
clintonearlwalker 1 year ago
2 stories. I remember reading a story called "The Strange Death of Louis Slotin" in high school, I think that this is what this vid is trying to depict. If I remember correctly Slotin said "the screwdriver slipped". My chem prof in college said he once worked for the NRC. He said he once peered through a window a guy putting radioactive solution in a stainless beaker. He said the room lit up blue. They guy walked out and said "I'm dead" 2 days later he was.
clintonearlwalker 1 year ago
stupid idiot that dropped his coffee!!!!!!!!
googleboy314 1 year ago 4
Accurate re-creation of the original accident!
frantic1971 1 year ago
How long could one live after this? Also, there seems to be MANY exceptionally
bright people who have commented here..can anyone tell me with a straight face that Chernobyl (spelling may be wrong) only resulted in 18 fatalities? Some report on the web here actually had that number - I'll try to link it. Seems to me any "containment" worker who went to that site had a 90%+ probability of dying promptly after an hour or so working there. Thanks everyone look forward to any replies :-)
ChristopherSaindon 1 year ago
"How long could one live after this?"
Depends on many factors. But, in the actual "tickling the dragon's tail" accident with Louis Slotin, he lived for 9 days. An accident before that with the same core involving Harry Daghlian, he lived for 25 days.
Watcher3223 1 year ago
@Watcher3223 Thanks for the insight really. I will hunt
down the site I found that report on, but indeed it was a
CCCP-based (or "proofread" meaning -- we know what that
means) and absolutely the number THEY said in this
report was an absurd 18. I remember being absolutely
stunned. I appreciate the reply :-)
ChristopherSaindon 1 year ago
"can anyone tell me with a straight face that Chernobyl (spelling may be wrong) only resulted in 18 fatalities?"
Where did you get that?
As for an official count, you can't rely on that considering the source (Soviet Union) and what they tended to do to with such data to avoid embarrassment and political fallout (no pun intended) from the international community. However, thousands probably have and, if still alive, will die over time from increased cancer risk due to exposure.
Watcher3223 1 year ago
@Watcher3223: the stats I cited were from the multi-government commission which looked into the accident. It was under the auspices of the UN. Granted the Soviet Union had paranoia problems, it is exceedingly difficult to hide huge numbers of deaths. Greenpeace (of course) says the casualties were 250,000, but they have no data to back it up; it is a guess.
puncheex 1 year ago
@puncheex "Greenpeace (of course) says the casualties were 250,000, but they have no data to back it up; it is a guess."
And, considering the source (Greenpeace), their estimates may have to be taken with a grain of salt; they have an agenda which can provide motivation to skew numbers to prove their point of view rather than merely presenting the truth.
Watcher3223 1 year ago
@Watcher3223: Indeed.
puncheex 1 year ago
@ChristopherSaindon
"Seems to me any "containment" worker who went to that site had a 90%+ probability of dying promptly after an hour or so working there."
Wouldn't be surprising considering the area would be quite hot as the explosion after the reactor blew its top spread radioactive material over a wide area.
As an aside, this is why modern reactors use a containment structure. Conversely, the inability to have a containment are why RBMK reactors, like Chernobyl, are especially dangerous.
Watcher3223 1 year ago
@ChristopherSaindon
1. Slotin lived about 9 days I think before his body finally shut down from massive renal failure.
2. 18 immediate fatalities, but several thousand after about 120 days from fire, radiation, etc.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
Comment removed
puncheex 1 year ago
@puncheex Thanks for that information. SO very sad..
ChristopherSaindon 1 year ago
@ChristopherSaindon: Actually, Chernobyl resulted in 56 fatalities. There is estimated to have been an additional 4000 from health problems, but they cannot be identified. There were several thousands of thyroid cancers, but they are the most treatable cancer, and those deaths are in the 56. The thought there would be a hump of solid cancers, but the hump never appeared. The cancer & birth defect rates are same as before the accident. Stats from UN. See wiki, "Chernobyl disaster".
puncheex 1 year ago
... There's not much doubt a lot of the cleanup workers had their lives shortened somewhat, but I have no stats on that. As an example, the naval workers at Crossroads were exposed to quite a bit of radiation. The estimate there is that on the average each sailor lost about 3 months of lifetime, but "on the average" has a very odd meaning in that context.
puncheex 1 year ago
If you loved Fallout 3, you HAVE to see Fat Man and Little Boy.
kdixon7783c 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
dmengel 1 year ago
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
dmengel 1 year ago
this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death. but mixes up two incidents that caused his and another sciientists dead during the "tickeling the dragon" experiments in los alamos. it was done to simplify the story, but was the main cause why the film had bad critics... for historic details refer wikipedia....
dmengel 1 year ago
@dmengel
"this clip is fictional, and does not show the real circumstances which caused louis slotins death."
The person depicted in the movie was not Louis Slotin but was a fictional character by the name of Michael Merriman.
You are correct that this incident is fiction and based on two criticality accidents with the same plutonium core, one resulting in the death of Harry Daghlian and the other resulting in the death of Louis Slotin.
This scene dramatized the accident with Mr. Slotin.
Watcher3223 1 year ago
That's a nasty way to commit suicide :/
Stefnir94 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Stefnir94
"That's a nasty way to commit suicide :/"
Definitely a horrible way to make one's life SCRAM from his body, eh?
Watcher3223 1 year ago
what happened when he touched it that would compell him to wiggle his fingers cause i dont know much about this stuff
eagerbeaver53 1 year ago
@eagerbeaver53
Slotin reported he felt a sour taste in his mouth and a burning sensation in his left hand...not so much because of heat, but probably because his nerves were hyperstimulated from the bombardment of gamma radiation.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
codent you buil a bomb buy using the same principle just have the hemi sphears around the pit and wait for it to go supercritical?
theman2160 1 year ago
@theman2160
Aside from the fact that you can't pick up Pu238 at your local Wal-mart, you can't just put explosives around two hemis and just blow them up...you have to shape the charges, they have to be timed to detonate (within nanoseconds...you need kryton switches for that kind of accuracy), plus a whole slew of other details...otherwise, you just have a rather dirty conventional bomb.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@theman2160: They weren't investigating the Pu itself. They were investigating tamper materials, explosives, all the ingredients. Each one has a characteristic absorption/reflection coefficient with neutrons, and a lot of that data was gathered empirically, as they had no supercomputers for sims.
puncheex 1 year ago
What would eventually happen to the core if he didn't separate the spheres after it became critical?
zanzoken123 1 year ago
@zanzoken123 The core could have gone supercritical, which means it could have exploded or turned into a mass of molten radioactive. Maybe a little of both. Any way you cut it though, it falls under Bad Things.
Falconer13X 1 year ago
@Falconer13X: It would have become a very hot (temp and rad) puddle, technically known as a fizzle. To get an explosion requires that thecghain reaction be ramped up very fast. The core without the reflectors around it is not itself critical; as a puddle it would be even less so. Pure plutonium is non-radioactive enough to be handled (plated in some metal to avoid poisoning), but once it went through an activation like that it would become exceedingly radioactive.
puncheex 1 year ago
Hey this exact thing happened to me a couple of days ago...but in my case i now posses the power to microwave anything i want whenever i want.....ping!!!
denverJPUE 1 year ago
@capitaltrading -As far as terminology goes, I always got my berylium reflector/tamper, mixed up with my Polonium initiator;)
jbird0168 1 year ago
@capitaltrading This was in today's (march 25th, 2010's) top article on Listversedotcom, "10 Famous Incidences of Death by Radiation," and this movie was mentioned. That poor bastard! :(
magog1138 1 year ago
lol..dont play with things like that, especially not with a screwdriver
ottlik86 2 years ago
@ottlik86
Well, Slotin wasn't following specified protocol in the first place using a screwdriver.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
@GammyGoose: I put my uranium under my bed and beryllium next to vegetables in the living room ;)
DiggaBua 2 years ago
@DiggaBua Plus of course this was all new stuff and nobody had recieved a lethal dose of radiation before
lewisner 1 year ago
@lewisner: No, but they knew pretty well what was what. Parsons (USN) did some of these experiments before Trinity, and in one case had a near critical pile of Pu bricks when he leaned over it and saw the meter go off the scale. He scattered the bricks with his hand, but received a week's worth of rems. He forgot that water (i.e., his body) reflects neutrons and thus increased the flux.
puncheex 1 year ago
I'm a physics student as well, have talked to people who worked in the Manhattan project. Of course this was absurdly dangerous. However, they felt they were in a desperate race to build the bomb before the Nazis, and were willing to forgo most safety precautions in the name of speed, much like soldiers on the front were. The Manhattan project personnel suffered fewer casualties than an army unit that size would have in Europe, and they got the bomb built in time.
oyrp70 2 years ago
@oyrp70: The demon core deaths happened after Japan surrendered, in late 45 and spring of 46. The core was used in crossroads able in July of 46. There was a lot of political and interpersonal things going on, which may have weighed on the workers. No excuse for sloppiness, which is what this was.
puncheex 1 year ago
that guy just pretty much killed himself by touching that thing. ive seen the whole movie.
dannielle61392 2 years ago
@dannielle61392: Not by touching.... the x-ray comes through the air...
DiggaBua 2 years ago
@dannielle61392
He was a dead man walking the moment the sphere went critical...touching or no, he was less than a meter away from it.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
Uranium 235 i think.
dannielle61392 2 years ago
@dannielle61392
It was Pu238, actually. Fresh from Oak Ridge.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
It's a combination of the Slotin and Daghlian accidents, which happened in '45 and '46. There was no chance of an explosion - the impact velocities were far too low. In the bomb itself, the explosion was triggered by 10 tonnes of plastic explosive which compressed the core to half its' diameter. And I thought Chernenkov radiation was more purple, but I'm just nit picking now. ;-)
Davesax1965 2 years ago
Plutonium, acutally.
columbusmozart 2 years ago
Wow, I read about this... I had no idea they made a movie out of it, and honestly... this is exactly how I imagined it.
howitzer86 2 years ago
It's a pretty good movie except there is a "lurve" sub plot with Laura Dern which is is nauseating.
lewisner 2 years ago
Crap! Now I have to see this movie.
AliasUndercover 2 years ago 3
You wouldn't be incinerated in an incident like this-- merely exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. See Tristan3D's comment below.
Macgyver4096 2 years ago
Is that Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima I hear?
PonThePony 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
hy does it say tickling the dragon when there isnt any tickling in it?
hannahmontana123hsm 2 years ago
Aren't they confusing two different accidents?
moforhym3noc3ros 2 years ago
The device in question was nicknamed the Demon Core. see Wikipedia
aidey10 2 years ago
Because the movie was intended as a historical drama and not a documentary, some changes were made for the sake of having a more dramatic story. In this case, details from two seperate accidents were almagamated into one scene to allow one of the main characters to have a heroic death.
skrolnik 2 years ago 2
Not confusing, just dramatising.
The spilled coffee cup is purely invention, Slotin was levering the demon core open with a screwdriver and he just slipped allowing the top hemisphere to drop.
GilgaFrank 2 years ago
It's an amalgamation of the two. And Slotin's accident happened after WWII, not during.
columbusmozart 2 years ago
@moforhym3noc3ros
A combination of the two accidents, which were similar.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
Slotin gets 2100 rems, that's got to hurt.
This accident actually happened in 1946, and not during the manhattan project.
maureenOWW 2 years ago 5
this is an accident of harry daghlian.
retsuzchannel 2 years ago
Actually in the film Cusack is playing Michael Merriman, but in reality the accident happened to Louis Slotin. Daghlians accident was due to him dropping an absorbion brick onto the core.
Look up 'Demon Core' on wikipedia, it describes both accidents.
maureenOWW 2 years ago 2
what would have happened if he hadn't hit the sphere?
moforhym3noc3ros 2 years ago
critical mass
ChompTrax 2 years ago
very small nuclar explosion less than 100 tons of tnt, because there is no implosion. Chain reaction starts and IMMEDIATELY destroy plutonium hemispheres. Aftermatch - very high plutonium contamination.
retsuzchannel 2 years ago
No, no explosion at all. Because of the so called "prompt burst", the plutonium is getting hot; the material is expanding slowly and the overall chainreaction becomes "subcritical" - no explosion... but nevertheless very reactive (and thus radioactive). He had to pull it away, to rescue the rest of his comrads... otherwise they would have dies as he did 9 days later.
Tristan3D 2 years ago 5
In fact the Plutonium if left unchecked would have become white hot and started the China Syndrome.
lewisner 2 years ago
@moforhym3noc3ros
Everyone in the room would have received a lethal dose of ionising radiation.
columbusmozart 1 year ago
what exactly happened in this scene?
What was he testing,
and what were the consequences of his actions?
LeilaAnOceanAway 2 years ago
They were testing to see what happened when you approached a critical mass on the plutonium sphere. It taught them how to control nuclear reactions. When the sphere closed it started a self sustaining chain reaction. When he knocked the sphere over the reaction stopped, but he got a fatal dose of radiation, he ended up dying a few days later.
stepbackfool 2 years ago 5
@stepbackfool: In real life, they were testing different tamping materials. Each one has different relection/absorption characteristics, and they were searching for materials that would enhance the yield, or be more easily worked, etc.
puncheex 1 year ago
what a horrible way to go
OtterGar 2 years ago
thanks for the video.
dooschko 2 years ago
and then he died a horrible death
BeondaPale 2 years ago