Little Boy and Fat Man
August 6th and 9th, 1945 forever go down in Japanese history as well as world history as the most painful historical milestones, as well as a reminder for all mankind of the horrors of war, as well as the cost of peace. Two atomic bombs named Little Boy and Fat Man exploded over Japan, over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, killing more than 200 thousand people, mostly civilians. It was considered the last attack before the Japanese fascist government accepted to surrender to the Allies.
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| Hiroshima City a few hours after the Little Boy explosion |
However, even after the second bomb exploded over
Nagasaki, Japan showed no sign of surrender.
Meanwhile, in America, a third bomb was ready. The
goal that time was to attack directly at Tokyo - the last stronghold of the Imperial
Japan.
From
Rufus…
The heart of that third bomb was a core, a mass of
radioactive plutonium called "Rufus". The bomb was intended to create
a portal to hell in Tokyo and drag a third of the city's population down there,
and Rufus, a 6kg sphere, was what brought that destructive power.
But in the end that did not happen, on August 15th, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his surrender to the Allies on the radio. The third bomb was not used, and so Rufus was kept at the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) for further research and for another nuclear project.
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| Los Alamos National Laboratory |
At that time, the United States was the only country
possessing nuclear weapons. But when they learned that the Soviet Union was
also developing its own nuclear projects, the Americans realized that they had
to make their weapons more powerful, more effective. Despite causing great
devastation, the 2 bombs used in Japan were not even at their full potential.
That's why the nuclear scientists at Los Alamos had to work quickly to get
Rufus (the core) to reach the limit of its power.
…to Demon Core
Harry Daghlian was a 24-year-old young scientist
working in Los Alamos. He has been involved in the development of nuclear
weapons (the Manhattan project) in the US since 1943, and like his colleagues,
he also noticed that the bombs in Japan did not bring out their maximum power.
its. So Daghlian wanted to complete the experiment as soon as possible.
On the evening of August 21, 1945, after dinner,
Daghlian returned to the laboratory to continue studying Rufus. He violated the
regulations here when conducting the experiment alone without anyone else
supporting and supervising other than an outside security guard.
He had placed bricks made of wolfram around Rufus, which was a way to bring the plutonium core to its limit. The dense density of the wolfram molecules would reflect the neutrons emitted from the plutonium back to the core and further splitted the atoms, and when the plutonium atoms splitted, they released neutrons again towards the wolfram bricks. As this process was repeated, it increased the rate of atomic splitting in the core and would bring the core to the limit of its strength. To be on the safe side, Daghlian placed a radiation meter while spacing the wolfram brick around Rufus.
The clock rattled loudly as the wolfram wall had
risen 25cm, so Daghlian quickly pulled out one of the bricks. But then, he
accidentally dropped it on the core itself, and that mistake killed him.
As a flash of blue light and a burst of heat swept
through, Daghlian hurriedly picked up the wolfram bricks one by one from Rufus.
But he, and the guard, absorbed a lethal amount of radiation.
Daghlian quickly developed symptoms of acute
radiation poisoning, and after only 3 weeks, he died in hospital. The goard
also died 33 years later from blood cancer caused by radiation.
9
months later
After the accident that led to the death of Harry
Daghlian, the Los Alamos laboratory had tightened safety regulations. However,
it was not enough to prevent another fatal accident, this time was more
serious.
On May 21st, 1945, nine months after the first accident, Louis Slotin, also a nuclear physicist, was trying to reproduce his colleague's experiment. But this time to be on the safe side, he didn't use wolfram bricks around the core anymore but placed a beryllium dome directly on top of it. It is also a neutron-reflecting material. In addition, he also placed a screwdriver between the two masses of matter, which acted as a place for neutrons to escape, avoiding repeating Daghlian's mistake.
That day, however, there were seven other scientists
and a photographer in the lab. In other words, the lives of everyone in the
room depended on a screwdriver. Slotin did the experiment many times and never
had a problem, but that day it did.
The screwdriver slipped from Slotin's hand and the
beryllium dome collapsed onto the plutonium sphere. A flash of blue light, which
was the Cherenkov effect when neutrons pass through the air, and a blast of
heat hits everyone in the room. To save the situation, Slotin flipped the
screwdriver and used his bare hands to lift the beryllium dome, thus absorbing
the deadly radiation. But that action did not save the other people in the
room, they all absorbed the radiation and three of them died many years later.
As for Slotin, he had suffered 9 days until his death.
Two fatal accidents with plutonium that took place within a year finally put an end to manual experiments with it. Instead, scientists were then forced to use remote-controlled machines, and were only allowed to indirectly manipulate the core at a distance of hundreds of meters.
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| Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin |
The name Rufus had also been removed. From there on,
it was only referred to as the "Demon Core".
Ending
The Demon Core was originally intended for use in the 1946 nuclear tests at the Bikini Islands, also known as Operation Crossroad. But after two accidents, the amount of radiation it emitted increased significantly and it took time for it to decrease. It was one of three bombs in Operation Crossroad, along with the other two, Able and Baker, and it was Charlie. However, after the Baker test, the radiation it left behind was so great that the plan to test Charlie was aborted. The core was then melted down and recycled for other cores, ending its deadly journey.
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| The Baker test on July 24th, 1946 |