How a Screwdriver Slip Caused a Fatal 1946 Atomic Accident (bbc.com) 67
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: A specially illustrated BBC story created by artist/writer Ben Platts-Mills tells the remarkable story of how a dangerous radioactive apparatus in the Manhattan Project killed a scientist in 1946.
"Less than a year after the Trinity atomic bomb test," Platts-Mills writes, "a careless slip with a screwdriver cost Louis Slotin his life. In 1946, Slotin, a nuclear physicist, was poised to leave his job at Los Alamos National Laboratories (formerly the Manhattan Project). When his successor came to visit his lab, he decided to demonstrate a potentially dangerous apparatus, called the "critical assembly". During the demo, he used his screwdriver to support a beryllium hemisphere over a plutonium core. It slipped, and the hemisphere dropped over the core, triggering a burst of radiation. He died nine days later."
In an interesting follow-up story, Platts-Mills explains how he pieced together what happened inside the room where 'The Blue Flash' occurred (it has been observed that many criticality accidents emit a blue flash of light).
15 years later there were more fatalities at a nuclear power plant after the Atomic Energy Commission opened the National Reactor Testing Station in a desert west of Idaho Falls, according to Wikipedia: The event occurred at an experimental U.S. Army plant known as the Argonne Low-Power Reactor, which the Army called the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One (SL-1)... Three trained military men had been working inside the reactor room when a mistake was made while reattaching a control rod to its motor assembly. With the central control rod nearly fully extended, the nuclear reactor rated at 3 MW rapidly increased power to 20 GW. This rapidly boiled the water inside the core.
As the steam expanded, a pressure wave of water forcefully struck the top of the reactor vessel, upon which two of the men stood. The explosion was so severe that the reactor vessel was propelled nine feet into the air, striking the ceiling before settling back into its original position. One man was impaled by a shield plug and lodged into the ceiling, where he died instantly. The other men died from their injuries within hours. The three men were buried in lead coffins, and that entire section of the site was buried.
"The core meltdown caused no damage to the area, although some radioactive nuclear fission products were released into the atmosphere."
This week Idaho Falls became one of the sites re-purposed for possible utility-scale clean energy projects as part of America's "Cleanup to Clean Energy" initiative.
"Less than a year after the Trinity atomic bomb test," Platts-Mills writes, "a careless slip with a screwdriver cost Louis Slotin his life. In 1946, Slotin, a nuclear physicist, was poised to leave his job at Los Alamos National Laboratories (formerly the Manhattan Project). When his successor came to visit his lab, he decided to demonstrate a potentially dangerous apparatus, called the "critical assembly". During the demo, he used his screwdriver to support a beryllium hemisphere over a plutonium core. It slipped, and the hemisphere dropped over the core, triggering a burst of radiation. He died nine days later."
In an interesting follow-up story, Platts-Mills explains how he pieced together what happened inside the room where 'The Blue Flash' occurred (it has been observed that many criticality accidents emit a blue flash of light).
15 years later there were more fatalities at a nuclear power plant after the Atomic Energy Commission opened the National Reactor Testing Station in a desert west of Idaho Falls, according to Wikipedia: The event occurred at an experimental U.S. Army plant known as the Argonne Low-Power Reactor, which the Army called the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One (SL-1)... Three trained military men had been working inside the reactor room when a mistake was made while reattaching a control rod to its motor assembly. With the central control rod nearly fully extended, the nuclear reactor rated at 3 MW rapidly increased power to 20 GW. This rapidly boiled the water inside the core.
As the steam expanded, a pressure wave of water forcefully struck the top of the reactor vessel, upon which two of the men stood. The explosion was so severe that the reactor vessel was propelled nine feet into the air, striking the ceiling before settling back into its original position. One man was impaled by a shield plug and lodged into the ceiling, where he died instantly. The other men died from their injuries within hours. The three men were buried in lead coffins, and that entire section of the site was buried.
"The core meltdown caused no damage to the area, although some radioactive nuclear fission products were released into the atmosphere."
This week Idaho Falls became one of the sites re-purposed for possible utility-scale clean energy projects as part of America's "Cleanup to Clean Energy" initiative.
Demon core (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yes the famous "demon core" which was named so for being involved in a series of accidents, including this one. It was later destroyed and the plutonium used for other projects. Well-known story, not news.
Re:Demon core (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Demon core (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, another fatal accident happened with the same core. This second incident though did not use the approved protocols, and had been warned against by Enrico Fermi. Probably a mix of war-time urgency to rush, plus some bravado. These days we get safety training for electricity, how to lift boxes, where the fire exits are, etc. In hindsight it seems amazing that someone was allowed to work on a sub-critical core using only a screwdriver to prop up a shield, after being warned, or the other case where the
Re:Demon core (Score:4, Insightful)
People act like the screwdriver thing was how things were done, or the result of people not carefully considering whether this was a good idea or not.
The first time you could maybe make the case that the guy working alone, who deliberately didn't use the safety things that would 100% have stopped this was maybe in a rush. It still seems likely he was doing daredevil shit to be a daredevil, but maybe he was just impatient.
In the second case, after it had killed THAT guy, a dude who knew about all that and had visited the first dude in the hospital was showing off with the same bullshit thing, to a bunch of men. There's absolutely 100% no way that was not totally daredevil showmanship and no other thing. 0% chance. The danger was the allure, the risk was the point, as surely as it is in Russian roulette.
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It's human nature. Not all humans are like that, probably only a small proportion, but enough that you have to engineer things to be safe in the face of it.
Re: Demon core (Score:2)
Have you heard the expression "news to me"?
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Have you heard the expression "news to me"?
Please hand in your Nerd card.
Fat Man and Little Boy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fat Man and Little Boy (Score:5, Informative)
The accident with the core and the screwdriver is an excellent scene in the movie "Fat Man and Little Boy"
Yes, although they changed the timeline for dramatic effect.
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They also consolidated both accidents and victims into a composite character... an early role for John Cusack.
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Thanks to my wife, I've seen about a dozen movies and documentaries regarding Henry the VIII and Anne Boleyn. They all basically describe the same events, but each tends to be different in characterization and motivation. One in particular makes the case that Anne Boleyn was basically maneuvered into the affair by her parents who wanted the prestige (and.money) that would come from having a daughter who was queen.
Point being that if you've only seen a single version then you're only getting a single viewpoi
Criticality (Score:2)
I've always wondered if most would say that he was exposed to an "atom bomb". Or does that require super-criticality to meet the definition?
Re:Criticality (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always wondered if most would say that he was exposed to an "atom bomb". Or does that require super-criticality to meet the definition?
There was no explosion [cambridge.org]. No explosion, no bomb.
Not a bomb by any definition (Score:3)
This is classic example of a prompt criticality accident [wikipedia.org]. An "atom bomb" must be designed in such away that enough fission events will happen to produce meaningful destructive yield before the device blows itself apart. This requires prompt criticality, but there's a lot more involved. The simple arrangement of a plutonium core and a beryllium neutron reflector is not sufficient to constitute an "atom bomb".
Accidents WILL happen (Score:1)
Regardless of technology. But in the case of nuclear, accidents have a higher tendency towards "spectacular effect".
Procedures & physical safety devices only go so far to avoid 'spectacular' mishaps. Not to mention intentional acts (sabotage, terrorists, cutting corners to safe costs, etc).
The safest move is not to play.
and have an no homers + homer rule (Score:2)
and have an no homers + homer rule
Re: (Score:2)
Some people think that stupid screwdriver tricks are totally okay as long as you declare "No Honer [wikipedia.org]" just before or after doing the trick. They are, of course, wrong.
Re: Accidents WILL happen (Score:2)
Re: Accidents WILL happen (Score:1)
Yet you do hear about it...historically anyway...so that's BS.
Also, coal mines in China are being automated, so much less risk to human life from now on, I'd suggest. Yeah, for Huawei and 5G.
Re:Accidents WILL happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Naw, nuclear's safety record still stacks up pretty well versus oil, gas and coal. Nuclear's accidents are, as you said, "spectacular" so they draw a lot of attention but fossil fuels accidents and deaths happen under the radar, to say nothing about the secondary problems and deaths from emissions which could be counted in the millions at this point if we want to get really accurate.
Plus that industry has it's own amount of spectacular accidents; Piper Alpha, Kielland, Deepwater Horizon, Valdez, Bohai, etc
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Problem is that something like Deepwater Horizon can be cleaned up. A nuclear disaster is a permanent thing. Look how the area in Ukraine is not habitable decades after Chernobyl has happened. Look at how China is checking radioactivity in fish due to the water release from Japan's power plants.
Problem is that you can make efficient oil, gas, and coal plants. Nuclear is still effectively unchanged with its designs and its relatively wasteful turbine designs since the 1950s. If a coolant pump fails with
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Deepwater Horizon was "cleaned up" about as well as Chernobyl was, as in the material that was able to be collected was and dealt with but the rest is just left to nature. It spilled 134 million gallons of oil, the Gulf of Mexia is still affected. Meanwhile outside the direct vicinity of the reactor area there has been many, many, many reports of how nature has recovered around Chernobyl. Same with Fukushima, yes there is radiation concerns but it's being "cleaned up" just the same.
None of these things a
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One "fun" fact that I didn't know is that a lot of the anti-nuclear hysteria generated back in the 60s and 70s was apparently directly orchestrated and funded by the Seven Sisters: Exxon, Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, Socal, British Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell.
We have just SO much to thank the fossil fuel industry for....
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Nuclear is still effectively unchanged with its designs
No it's not. Nuclear designs have evolved dramatically over the years. You probably haven't noticed because you're busy staring at a 50 year old plant.
If a coolant pump fails with any nuclear design (even modern GenIV ones)
Errr no. One of the key features of many GenIV designs is passive cooling loops. Even the nearly 20 year old AP-1000 can provide cooling indefinitely without a single pump running and all external and internal power lost to the system. No thorium required. We have built AP-1000s.
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Gen IV is a nice item to have on artwork, but there are no Gen IV reactors in the real world, much less ones making a dent for power making on the grid.
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>> We have built AP-1000s.
Yea sure. Why do you think those were built ?
- China built one just to get all the technology.
- US built one or two just because of the sunk cost fallacy, and incidentally, to sustain their nuke program in the long term.
Everybody else cancelled their order when they say that it costs 4x more than any other electricity source.
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The nuclear safety record stacks up well against solar and wind as well, many more people die from solar/wind per MWh production than nuclear.
https://www.engineering.com/st... [engineering.com]
Facts. (Score:2)
Fact: Accidents happen.
There is always some careless people.
Fact: Nuclear electricity is now economically dead in 2023.
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But in the case of nuclear, accidents have a higher tendency towards "spectacular effect". [...] The safest move is not to play.
I would say climate change is spectacular enough, and will cause much more impacts to everyone's life. And most of it is caused by fossil fuels, yet we keep "playing" and burning them.
Even pollution from car exhausts (I guess you own a car and use it regularly? Even if you don't, your neighbors do) statistically impacts your health more than any nuclear plant in the world. Even pollution just from micro-particles generated through the abrasion of any vehicle's tires (including EVs) impacts your health more
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Who says it's faux, Coward?
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Here are some spectacular effect from dam failures [worldatlas.com] (the Banqiao one alone causing 171000 deaths). Just to show that you can find "spectacular" things for anything. The fact that you want to focus only on nuclear ones to spread fear and push your own agenda is another topic entirely.
Economically dead. (Score:2)
Nuclear electricity is now economically dead.
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Keep repeating it and you might actually begin to believe it.
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But in the case of nuclear, accidents have a higher tendency towards "spectacular effect".
In what way? A guy here died slowly on a hospital bed. That's no where near as spectacular as say 2 dead from an oil platform catching fire from Pemex (why this example? because it's the most recent, ask me next month and I'll give you a different fatal example and maybe even a spectacular big bang).
The nuclear industry accidents aren't spectacular. Even the two examples of power plants exploding aren't remotely as spectacular as say the Hydro-Isom in Texas City Refinery exploding, or the port of Beirut htt [youtube.com]
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While I see your point, just want to point out that nuclear incidence are accompanied with radioactivity. Typically, this takes out the area out of rotation for some significant period of time.
I take it you've never seen a dam collapse, or a chemical release, or a coal tailings storage rupture and overflow. Taking large areas out of commission is not unique to nuclear, and that industry has done only a fraction of damage making land uninhabitable compared to other industries.
Again the only thing unique here is that radiation = scary so people shut their brains off.
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"Procedures & physical safety devices only go so far to avoid 'spectacular' mishaps. Not to mention intentional acts (sabotage, terrorists, cutting corners to safe costs, etc). The safest move is not to play."
What it demonstrates is just how bad human beings are at assessing risk. We focus on low-probability "spectacular" events, all while ignoring the constant, never ending stream of deaths from workers killed in coal mining and oil production accidents, or the millions who die each and every year from
movie advertising (Score:1, Insightful)
This story is advertising for the oppenheimer movie, plain and simple.
Re: (Score:2)
BBC has a larger audience than just slashdot.
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Jesus how jaded can you be. People are currently interested in what was going on at the time. That's the reason the story exists. The article doesn't mentioned the movie once. We get it, you take no interest in the world around you or what is trending right now. Others do. Move on with your life and let them be.
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Thank you.
Loads of books too (Score:2)
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http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/site... [mhs.mb.ca]
It's a weird one (Score:5, Interesting)
For a famous accident, there's something I've long found lacking: an explanation of what the hell was Slotin doing with that screwdriver.
The overall mechanics are well known: the core, the reflector, Slotin fiddling around with a screwdriver. But what was the point? You'd think they'd want to measure something, like making a radiation vs distance plot, but how do you measure the distance when somebody's just wiggling a screwdriver back and forth? Even if it was a demonstration where nobody would be actually taking measurements, the actual procedure surely should allow for precise measurements to be taken, and that seems impossible when somebody is just tipping the reflector back and forth in such an imprecise manner.
I may have finally found the answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
TL;DR: Slotin was trying to teach Alvin Graves, who'd be replacing him. The experiment apparently had two stages, the first one where the assembly would be brought close to criticality, and a second one where the distance would be fine tuned. So apparently all the screwdriver business is just trying to find a close enough ballpark to start from, after which he'd have switched to using precisely sized shims to narrow things down.
Got Any Personal Lab Mishaps to Share? (Score:2)
It pales by comparison to 'The Blue Flash', but Slashdotters of a certain age will likely remember mouth pipetting [rockefeller.edu] mishaps (nothing like the feeling of your tongue running over your teeth after accidentally sucking in a mouthful of HCl in CHEM 101 lab!).
Got any personal, school or work lab mishaps to share?
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SL-1 stories (Score:2)
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The reactor could start with one control rod -- apparently, the rod tended to stick. On that day, it was disconnected from its electrical servo mechanism for maintenance, and the workers on site needed to lift it a bit to reconnect it. So another theory is that he used too much force to overcome the sticking, and the rod suddenly got free and he lifted much too high.
The third theory is that they were prone to silly fratboy games (all were in their 20s) and one slapped the other on the arse as he was worki
People doing stupid things... (Score:2)
... with dangerous objects often die. What else is new?
Also, education cannot cure stupidity. It is a personality defect and it is permanent.
A few deaths is a trifle (Score:2)
The number of people killed in the nuclear industry is trivial compared to other causes, but death stories are exciting.
Bad analysis... (Score:2)
The screwdriver slipping was the proximate cause; but all the mistakes worth talking about were made in arrivin
Bullshit. (Score:2)
Bullshit. The screwdriver slipping was not the cause of the accident. The cause of the accident was researchers playing with extremely dangerous materials without any sort of safety precautions.
Accidents happen. Safety is the art of making sure there's at least one backup system that will hopefully stop easily anticipated accidents from progressing to catastrophic consequences.
I mean, seriously - I can think of a half dozen simple mechanism off the top of my head that would have not only prevented the ac
Re: (Score:2)
The actual root cause was the immense pressure people were under to produce results yesterday.
As such, the thought probably was, "Hey, do I do the experiment and move on, or do we all sit around for a couple of hours while we have a machinist crank out something for this one experiment that may or may not work."
And that assumes that they could even get a machinist with the proper security clearance into the room...
Re: (Score:2)
You make it sound like they just found the core lying around one day and then only used it for a single experiment.
I guarantee you that producing the core itself took a *lot* longer than it would take to build a simple rig to hold and manipulate the thing for all the experiments they were planning for it.
And technically the machinist doesn't need to know anything about the experiments - they could even tell someone on the opposite side of the country with no knowledge of the project that "we need to be able