Al_The_Man
09-05-2008, 10:31 AM
This was re-published today in our local paper honoring a Local boy Louis Slotin.
In spring 1946, Slotin had been working at the secret bomb-building compound of Los Alamos, N.M. for about 18 months.
On May 21, 1946, Slotin was asked to demonstrate a dangerous experiment known as "tickling the dragon's tail."
Ironically, "this would have been his last time doing the experiment," notes Zeilig, who wrote an exhaustive article about Slotin for
The Beaver magazine in 1995.
Slotin had done the table-top procedure dozens of times, to test the reactivity of a bomb core.
It involved gradually lowering one hemisphere of beryllium-coated plutonium onto another.
He had to bring them close enough to start a fission reaction without allowing them to touch and awaken the dragon's wrath.
With his right hand, Slotin was using a screwdriver to hold the hemispheres wedged apart.
His left hand grasped the upper hemisphere. A Geiger counter clicked faster and an instrument graphed the reaction rate in red ink as "criticality" approached.
It seems incredible today that anyone would perform a nuclear test with a screwdriver. But the intense Slotin had been taking such extraordinary risks since his days in Chicago.
He had a reputation as "a bit of a cowboy," says his nephew, Winnipegger Israel Ludwig.
"They cut corners," says Ludwig.
And Slotin may well have been recruited for the Manhattan Project because of his nervy attitude.
At 3:20 p.m. on that fateful day, with seven colleagues present in the lab, Slotin's screwdriver apparently slipped.
The two halves touched and "went critical" with a blue glow and a burst of heat.
The "bomb putter-togetherer" had given himself a fatal dose of radiation.
Since he was standing nearest to the apparatus, he absorbed most of the impact.
He died nine days later of horrific radiation sickness, blistered and swollen as if he had been standing 1.4 kilometres from a nuclear bomb blast.
The other seven men survived, though according to a 1989 story in the New York Times Magazine, at least three of their eventual deaths were linked to the radiation
In spring 1946, Slotin had been working at the secret bomb-building compound of Los Alamos, N.M. for about 18 months.
On May 21, 1946, Slotin was asked to demonstrate a dangerous experiment known as "tickling the dragon's tail."
Ironically, "this would have been his last time doing the experiment," notes Zeilig, who wrote an exhaustive article about Slotin for
The Beaver magazine in 1995.
Slotin had done the table-top procedure dozens of times, to test the reactivity of a bomb core.
It involved gradually lowering one hemisphere of beryllium-coated plutonium onto another.
He had to bring them close enough to start a fission reaction without allowing them to touch and awaken the dragon's wrath.
With his right hand, Slotin was using a screwdriver to hold the hemispheres wedged apart.
His left hand grasped the upper hemisphere. A Geiger counter clicked faster and an instrument graphed the reaction rate in red ink as "criticality" approached.
It seems incredible today that anyone would perform a nuclear test with a screwdriver. But the intense Slotin had been taking such extraordinary risks since his days in Chicago.
He had a reputation as "a bit of a cowboy," says his nephew, Winnipegger Israel Ludwig.
"They cut corners," says Ludwig.
And Slotin may well have been recruited for the Manhattan Project because of his nervy attitude.
At 3:20 p.m. on that fateful day, with seven colleagues present in the lab, Slotin's screwdriver apparently slipped.
The two halves touched and "went critical" with a blue glow and a burst of heat.
The "bomb putter-togetherer" had given himself a fatal dose of radiation.
Since he was standing nearest to the apparatus, he absorbed most of the impact.
He died nine days later of horrific radiation sickness, blistered and swollen as if he had been standing 1.4 kilometres from a nuclear bomb blast.
The other seven men survived, though according to a 1989 story in the New York Times Magazine, at least three of their eventual deaths were linked to the radiation