Demonic Charge, or How Radiation Learned to Kill
A reconstruction of the "tickling of the dragon's tail" that took the life of Louis Slotin
First victims
Strictly speaking, the very first victim of radiation was Nobel Prize winner in physics and chemistry Marie Skłodowska-Curie, a native of the Russian Empire. Her husband, Pierre Curie, also suffered. Due to the low concentrations of uranium in the ore they primarily worked with, they did not immediately die, but their hands were covered in ulcers for the rest of their lives. Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn carriage in 1906, while Marie lived much longer – until 1934, when she died from the effects of radiation sickness. To be precise, the diagnosis was "aplastic anemia." For the rest of her life, she was forced to wear black gloves, concealing the effects of her scientific experiments with tons of radioactive ore.
The woman was buried in a lead coffin, and her personal belongings were contaminated with radium-226, which has a half-life of over 1,500 years. The artifacts are stored in special lead boxes at the National Library of France. Access to Marie Curie's notebooks is open to the public, but due to their danger, library visitors are required to wear protective suits and provide written confirmation that they understand all health risks.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie wore a radium pendant on her chest.
History Science is full of personal tragedies. In 1907, Henri Moissan, known worldwide as the first to obtain pure fluorine, passed away. Many chemists before him had attempted to harness this halogen, at least 19 of whom had paid with their lives or suffered severe health problems. The French chemist was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1906 not only for his undoubted achievements, but also because of his serious illness—the committee in Stockholm feared Moissan would simply not survive. Incidentally, this was the reason why Dmitri Mendeleev's Nobel Prize was postponed. The Russian chemist was nominated for the 1907 prize, but he died on February 2 of that year. Moissan died 18 days later.
Henri Moissan
Along the same lines is the story of two American physicists, Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. Both worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project and both died from the "demon core." This is the scientific folklore name for the core of the third nuclear bomb the Americans were supposed to drop on Japan. But the Japanese surrendered in time, and the charge remained in the laboratory. However, to put it bluntly, it still managed to reap a small bloody harvest. To put it simply, the "demon core" was an 89-mm sphere composed of two plutonium hemispheres. The plutonium wasn't pure, but alloyed with gallium. A very expensive piece—the sphere weighed 6,2 kg and would cost over two and a half million dollars today. Exactly the same sphere was used in the "Fat Man" bomb, which the Americans dropped on Nagasaki. The first weapon to detonate over Hiroshima, as is well known, was made of uranium.
Let's fast forward to August 21, 1945, to one of the Manhattan Project laboratories, known as the "Omega Site." On that day, 24-year-old Harry Daghlian was playing with blocks. More precisely, he was building a kind of neutron reflector for a hollow plutonium sphere out of bricks. The bricks were 4,4-kilogram blocks of tungsten carbide. Why was he doing this? The researcher was attempting to build a tamper-like device, the neutron stopper found in a nuclear bomb. A tamper diverts neutrons back into the nucleus, thereby accelerating the chain reaction. Finding the balance between moderating and triggering the reaction was the goal of his research.
Harry Daghlian
This is the design Harry Daghlian was working with on the fateful evening of August 21, 1945.
The nature of the injuries to Daghlian's right hand, which he used to remove a tungsten brick from a plutonium sphere. The photo was taken 16 days before the physicist's death.
In theory, Daghlian could have caused a nuclear disaster in the laboratory. If he had "successfully" surrounded the plutonium sphere with tungsten carbide blocks, the core could have gone supercritical, triggering a chain reaction. The laboratory's neutron detector was supposed to warn of this. And it didn't fail—it tripped at the right moment, which startled the young physicist. He began disassembling the reflector brick by brick, and one of them fell on the plutonium sphere. It even sounds unpleasant—a 4,4-kilogram piece of tungsten falling on a nuclear bomb component. A chain reaction immediately began, the core erupted with a blue light (the "Cherenkov-Vavilov effect") and engulfed Daghlian in heat. The unfortunate man couldn't quickly remove the brick from the blazing core. Before extinguishing the reaction, he had to partially disassemble the massive reflector. Daghlian faced 25 days of terrible torture.
I think I'm finished
Despite tightened safety regulations, the "demon core" claimed another life. In May 1946, physicist Louis Slotin received a fatal dose of radiation in a similar manner at the same Omega facility in Los Alamos. Remarkably, both Slotin and Daghlian had roots in the Russian Empire. Daghlian's father was from Armenia, and the Slotin family emigrated to Canada to escape the Jewish pogroms of the late 19th century. Louis Slotin received a master's degree in geology from the University of Manitoba and later studied at King's College London. He worked in nuclear chemistry at the University of Chicago, from where he was recruited to the Manhattan Project.
On May 21, 1946, Zlotin and a group of fellow scientists were testing beryllium hemispheres, which were intended to perform the same function as in Daghlian's experiment. That is, they were supposed to reflect neutrons flying away from the "demonic core."
Louis Slotin (left) near the world's first nuclear bomb.
From a 21st-century perspective, the level of security at Los Alamos is astounding. Highly dangerous experiments with nuclear bomb cores were conducted barehanded and without basic safety equipment. The researchers themselves were well aware of this—they called such experiments "tickling the dragon's tail." Zlotin was performing extremely risky manipulations. What did he do? The physicist almost completely closed the two beryllium hemispheres over the "demon charge." This meant that almost all the neutrons from the assembly were reflected, and only a small fraction escaped through the gap left by Zlotin. Guess how he kept the hemispheres from collapsing?
A reconstruction of the tragedy: a household screwdriver holds two beryllium spheres of different sizes together. Zlotin had probably performed this dozens of times, but on May 21, 1946, everything went wrong. That summer, the "demonic core" was melted down to be on the safe side.
An ordinary screwdriver, which, as usual, slipped. And then, according to the rules of the game: a blue "Cherenkov glow," heat, and panicked attempts to stop the chain reaction. This was successful, but Zlotin received a radiation dose equivalent to 21 sieverts. It was as if he were 1,5 kilometers from the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. As he was carried out of the lab, he said, "I think I'm finished."
A detailed diagram of the researchers' quarters at the time of the tragedy at the Omega facility in Los Alamos. This later allowed doctors to more accurately determine the dose-response relationship for the human body. Besides Slotin, only one of those present in the laboratory died from radiation sickness, but many years later
Louis Slotin decided to leave the Manhattan Project for ethical reasons after the strikes on Japan. On the fateful day, he was demonstrating to his replacement the rules for handling nuclear components. weapons
The book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" describes his situation:
Zlotin began vomiting while still in the ambulance. His left arm, closest to the radiation source at the time of the incident, went numb. A swelling developed in his groin. He suffered from severe diarrhea and persistent vomiting. His condition worsened at the Los Alamos hospital. Exhausted, he watched helplessly as his arms filled with fluid, swelling like balloons. Painful blisters formed under his skin and soon burst.
Doctors tried in vain to save Louis Slotin, using Vaseline dressings, debridement of necrotic tissue, and ice baths for his extremities. Despite massive blood transfusions, radiation sickness progressed: the critical exposure destroyed the body at the cellular level. Hypoxia soon developed, the skin turned bluish, and bleeding ulcers covered his entire body. Doctors considered amputating his arms, from which the skin was peeling off in layers, but the patient's condition was hopeless. The complete destruction of bone marrow stem cells had deprived the body of its ability to regenerate and defend itself. In the final hours, necrosis spread to all organs. Due to the destruction of blood vessels and the intestinal mucosa, autolysis began: the body's own bacteria and toxins attacked the defenseless body. Sepsis, gangrene, liver failure, and vascular collapse led to systemic multiple organ failure. Louis Slotin died on the ninth day after the incident.
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