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"they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table" The unpleasant death of Louis Slotin [1] is an e
by andyjohnson0 9y ago
"they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table"
The unpleasant death of Louis Slotin [1] is an example of the risks these people were taking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Criticality_accid...
- liotier 9y agoSlotin's cautionary tale is such scary founding lore of the nuclear industry... Complacency born from habit is awfully powerful and that may be even scarier.
- rtkwe 9y agoThe radiation dosage section of that article is a mess and I think shows a limitation of wikipedia. The writers managed to not use the same unit in any two consecutive sentences and sometimes not even with in the same sentence and don't bother providing any way to relate the different units.
- bitJericho 9y agoSo... fix it?
- NelsonMinar 9y agoSlotin's story is such a great example of complacency. "Using a screwdriver was not a normal part of the experimental protocol. ... the screwdriver slipped and the upper beryllium hemisphere fell, causing a prompt critical reaction and a burst of hard radiation."
- scott_s 9y agoIt's also used as an example in the article.