By Gavin A. Todd
With the release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, movie-goers were inclined to
research the plot of the movie before and after watching the movie. One of the incidents you
might have read about was the demon core. In less than a year after Oppenheimer stepped down from director.
Why the name, what was this incident? The ‘demon’ core nicknamed ‘Rufus’ is a sphere of
plutonium. The main component in the development of nuclear weapons. Rufus was supposed to be the third bomb dropped on Japan. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki surrendered, the third bomb was never dropped. But they did store it for later testing.
With the primary focus being on the second incident, I will also mention the first incident. On
August 21st, 1945Physicist Harry Daghlian worked solo on the plutonium core, with security
guard Robert Hemmerly sitting at a desk only eleven feet away. While attempting to stack a
brick around the assembly of the core, he dropped a brick onto the core. This caused it to go
supercritical. He quickly moved the brick off the assembly. Harry had absorbed 200 rads, a very
fatal dose of radiation. The security guard Robert Hemmerly absorbed 8 rads, a controlled dose.
Harry died 25 days after the accident from acute radiation poisoning, and Robert died 33 years
afterward from leukemia.
Now that was a real accident, and not an act of gross negligence like the second incident.
On May 21st, 1946. Barely a year after the first incident. Louis Slotin and seven other scientists
were involved in the accident. The fault was on Louis Slotin. Lewis used a flat-head screwdriver
as a shim between the two beryllium hemispheres. The hemispheres cannot touch or they would go critical. The screwdriver slipped and a flash of blue lightning erupted from the core, it lasted a half a second. Louis was quick enough to flip the hemisphere off of it.
Louis used his body to shield physicist Alvin Graves, the man standing next to Louis, from lethal
radiation. Louis had absorbed around 1000 rads, five times the amount Harry Daghlin had
absorbed, and he only lasted 25 days. Alvin had only absorbed 166 rads. The realization for all
eight scientists set in, Slotin had doomed them all. If I was a scientist, and was was there, telling him to use the shims instead of a screwdriver, insisting. I don’t care if he did it many times before, I don’t care if you have a PhD, and I don’t care how confident you are with your ability to not blow us all up. We do not stick screwdrivers into the main component of a nuclear weapon. Why are you even here? Weren’t you supposed to be heading home?
Now I understand he was just teaching the ‘technique’ to Mr. Graves. But maybe we should
abide by safety protocols first? We should have used a shim. Louis had paid the price for his
gross negligence and stupidity, he died from acute radiation poisoning 9 days later. Nonetheless, he was considered a hero. I consider him an overconfident, high energy, low IQ, egotistical idiot. Despite him shielding Alvin from his mistake.
As for all the bystanders. They all died from 4 to 55 years after the accident. The earliest being
the death of a security guard in the Korean War. The latest died of natural causes and he only
absorbed 9 rads, a controlled dose. The rest of them died from diseases related to the absorption of radiation.
Nuclear safety. I encourage it. Or just lab safety in general. You never know. You could kill the
person next to you and not even know it. You could die a very painful and slow death like Harry
and Louis did. Or maybe you could kill yourself instantly. Safety amongst scientists. Please
come down from your high horse and think straight for a minute.
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