Daily MOS: The Demon Core

Some things in science are named in ways that obscure their terribleness. Celiac sounds like it could be a four door sedan. When I was young I thought smallpox wasn’t as bad as chickenpox because hey, they were small, right? And truly, macular degeneration sounds like a Gen X band name.

Then there’s this fucker we named the Demon Core.

Today’s Moment of Science… the erstwhile Rufus.

The process that makes a nuclear bomb go kablooey is known as fission (certain types use a combination of fusion and fission, but one science lesson a day, kids). An unstable atom like uranium or plutonium releases a couple of neutrons and, in the process, becomes a more stable atom and releases some energy. It’s like therapy or fucking, but for radioactive atoms. The neutrons smash into other atoms, causing them to likewise undergo fission. Since each atom that undergoes fission releases multiple neutrons, this can cause a runaway chain reaction when left uncontrolled.

At the end of WWII, we had the unused heart of a nuclear bomb sitting around waiting to fuck shit up. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory couldn’t be expected to just leave it alone. It was so shiny. So new. So full of untapped data.

There were still plenty of unknowns about nukes. But they knew one thing; these experiments were so high risk they were nicknamed ‘tickling the dragon’s tail.’ One wrong move, and that ball was gonna go all ‘dracarys’ on your ass.

The core was named ‘Rufus,’ but the name didn’t stick. Because it took mere days for what would become known as the Demon Core to take its first victim.

A week after Japan surrendered in August of 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian conducted an experiment to collect data on the core when it nears criticality. He surrounded the 14lb mass of plutonium with tungsten carbide bricks, causing neutrons the plutonium naturally releases to reflect back on itself. His geiger counter went berserk, warning him the plutonium monster was about to go supercritical. He carefully took the bricks down, everything was fine, and he lived happily ever after.

…for a few hours until he went back to the lab and tried it again. Alone.
Know how you probably shouldn’t swim, play bridge, or insert particularly angular objects into your rectum alone? Same rule for mucking about with nuclear cores.

In a spectacular ‘whoopsydaisy,’ he knocked a brick onto the core, and in a flash of blue light and a burst of heat, he had awoken the dragon from its slumber.

Frantic and futile, like shoving your iPhone into rice after you drop it into the toilet when poop-texting, he knocked away the brick to stop the reaction. His hand that touched the brick was prickly and numb, burning severely shortly thereafter. He succumbed to acute radiation sickness in 25 days.

Safety protocols were reviewed and made more robust in the wake of his death.

But ‘Murika, so we fucked with it again.

The next spring, Dr. Louis Slotin, a Canadian physical chemist and one of the premier nuclear scientists of his time, was demonstrating another supercriticality experiment for colleagues. A dome made of beryllium fitted over the core reflected neutrons back at it to bring it nearly to criticality. He needed to keep a gap between the dome and the core so that a few neutrons could get out, preventing criticality. To accomplish this, he kept the dome wedged open with a screwdriver held in his hand. Which was definitely not protocol.

Enrico Fermi had warned him that he would be dead within a year.
To nobody’s surprise, his hand slipped, and the lab was hit with a familiar blast of blue light and heat. Slotin only survived for nine days. Three of the seven observers later died of causes suspected to be linked to their doses of radiation.

After the second criticality, it was decided that maybe controlling the heart of a nuke with bricks and screwdrivers was not good, research ceased, and Demon Core was, anticlimactically, melted down into other weapons.

This has been your daily Moment of Science, and a plea to put on your safety goggles if you just have to play with fire.

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