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The Blue Flash: A careless slip led to a fatal accident in the Manhattan Project
- mcpackieh 3y ago"A careless slip" really undersells all of the deliberate bad decisions that set the stage for a single slip to have such devastating consequences. Imagine I have decided to balance a bucket of burning gasoline on my head. One slip is disastrous, but focusing on the slip seems myopic.
- barelyauser 3y agoBut it really does sell the grand tragedy that it is. Thoughtful and comprehensive analysis does not sell well.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI think it would be a more interesting and useful article if it focused more on the normalization of needless risk taking, particularly Slotin's history with reckless bravado. Giving that sort of background would teach a lesson people can apply to their own lives (being young and brave doesn't make you invincible), and also give the article an excuse to talk about other sensational events like the time Slotin decided to go swimming with a nuclear reactor.
- cubefox 3y agoThat begs the question: What's more tragic, a preventable or an unpreventable accident?
- barelyauser 3y agoI think a preventable one. Consider the Air France 447 accident. It came to be due to various conditions. But I remember a lot of headlines about "if only the pilots had not done anything, the plane would have cleared the weather and keep on flying". I think putting the whole thing into a "single slip" enhances the drama.
- cubefox 3y agoYet slips are bound to happen, while systematic security measures could have prevented the accident even in the presence of slips. Though perhaps there is a difference between drama and tragedy. Or between superficial and thoughtful.
- chongli 3y agoYeah. The slip wasn’t the careless part, the protocol was. After those criticality accidents (there were 2 with the same core!) they finally decided to adopt reasonable precautions and switch to remote-operated testing of the cores.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoLab safety wasn't thing and the people in the lab resisted any attempt to create it. It's no surprise people died.
- danbr 3y agoIn this case, Louis Slotin was the safety mechanism. Different times… I’m currently reading Command and Control which dives into nuclear safety and more interestingly, accidents. I recommend it: https://books.google.com/books/about/Command_and_Control.html?id=lJ6JDQAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Command_and_Control.htm...
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoYes - multiple near-critical screw-ups at the Los Alamos lab. People seemed surprisingly casual in handling of something that could (and did) kill them.
- dcminter 3y agoBear in mind that the incident was only a little more than a decade after this photo was taken: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper "Workplace safety" is a comparatively modern invention.
- justrealist 3y ago
- thelazyone 3y agoKudos to the article for not fuelling radiation-related fears! Slotin died because a stupid, preventable accident, and Plutonium is indeed dangerous. But stupid, preventable accidents happen in many industries and they are just as lethal. I appreciate that the events are well described, but no unnecessary rethoric is added to that. (I'm still burnt by the amount of gut-wrenching drama they added in Chernobyl)
- zenkat 3y agoOne of the safety training stories at the lab I used to work at was about a chemist who set his lunchtime hamburger on the shelf in the fume hood while running reactions with a potent methylating agent. Slow painful death over the course of a week. Definitely put the fear of god in me.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPrevious recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36872955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36872955 Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36902533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36902533
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Making 'The Blue Flash': How I reconstructed a fatal atomic accident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36872955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36872955 - July 2023 (61 comments) A careless slip led to a fatal accident in the Manhattan Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36798594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36798594 - July 2023 (1 comment) The Demon Core and the Strange Death of Louis Slotin (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36022373 - May 2023 (59 comments) The Demon Core and the Strange Death of Louis Slotin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25317021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25317021 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Demon Core: The Strange Death of Louis Slotin (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20744425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20744425 - Aug 2019 (22 comments) Demon Core - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876 - June 2019 (55 comments) The blue flash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754713 - May 2016 (1 comment) Demon Core: The Strange Death of Physicist Louis Slotin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11749742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11749742 - May 2016 (34 comments)
- shockeychap 3y agoI realize this isn't a popular opinion, but it bothers me how those who depict the tragedy of an accident like this seem to do so in the service of painting a dangerous picture of atomic energy, and they do it by ignoring and overlooking other accidental deaths. The Manhattan Project moved blazingly fast, and people died in vehicle accidents, fires, electrocutions, and more. Every death was tragic and represented a life cut short. But it seems like much has been written of Louis Slotin's accident while very little is said of the many others who died more "conventionally". This is part of the reason that many people have an exaggerated fear of nuclear power when, in fact, the accidental death rate from it (even when you include Chernobyl) is far less than that of petroleum, hydro, and even wind - in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude. It's one of the safest energy sources, but takes a front-seat as the villain of the play when it comes to most articles by media, especially legacy media.
- fearface 3y agoThe reason why there’s a ton of attention in nuclear disaster is because of the damage potential.
- andyjohnson0 3y agoI understand and kind of agree with your general point. But nuclear fission accudenta have the potential to render large (on a human acale) areas of land uninhabitable. However unlikely, thats a problem. And we still dont have a good, proven solution to nuclear waste disposal. (And yes, I understand that carbon-based fuels produce waste too.)
- kgabis 3y agoWe do have a solution - just bury it underground. And the best part is: it gets safer with time!
- thelazyone 3y agoI remember an anti-nuclear talking about the Finnish project for long term storage. He was depicting the project cost (4 billions) as ridicolously high and therefore unfeasible. Interesting that each plant (around 10 billions?) of Finland could use it for 100 years... seems like a no brainer to me!
- JoeDaDude 3y agoA dramatization of the accident was part of the film Fat Man and Little Boy, clip below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY A little more factual dramatization was presented in the TV show Dark Matters titled "Risky Radiation" but I am unable to locate a video clip atm. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421370/?ref_=ttep_ep4 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421370/?ref_=ttep_ep4
- avereveard 3y agoThere also was a Stargate SG-1 episode about it (Meridian)
- markhahn 3y agojeez this is evergreen. I wonder if it's because it shows instances of profound stupidity among people we tend to credit as very smart, or if it's just fascination with the exotic and dangerous world of criticality. unfortunate that it kind of gives oxygen to the "nuclear cooties" phobia.
- zenkat 3y agoPop-culture tangent: Does anyone know if Slotin's story was the inspiration for Dr. Manhattan's orgin story in _The Watchmen_? Many resonances between the two.
- delecti 3y agoMaybe, but I lean towards assuming not. Most (all?) of the characters in Watchmen were Charlton Comics characters with the serial numbers scratched off, and their backstories adjusted slightly to fit the setting. Dr. Manhattan specifically was based on Captain Atom, whose origin was originally that he was trapped in a rocket as it launched. The change from that to the "intrinsic field" experiment was probably just to make it more "weird" along with Ozymandias' actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Atom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Atom > The character's origin had Adam working as a technician in a special experimental rocket when it accidentally launched with him trapped inside. Adam was atomized when the rocket exploded while entering the upper atmosphere. However, he somehow gained superpowers that included the ability to reform his body safely on the ground
- matthewdgreen 3y agoWhat's crazy about the Slotin incident is that it occurred in 1946, months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. This wasn't some unavoidable "race to beat the Nazis to the bomb" accident, it was just tragic sloppiness.
- Dachande663 3y agoA long time ago I mentioned this story to my dad, an engineer of the mechanical kind. He said, in his simple way, why was the system built that way? Why not lift the core up rather than drop the reflector down? If anything goes wrong, the default is it stops. I know it’s silly but I think of what he said often. So many times the solution to a problem at work is to bring in more tech, another stack, more complexity while in his world it was “what can we take out of this loop so there’s less to go wrong?” I wonder what he’d think of modern engine power trains and all their gubbins.