How bricks, a screwdriver, and a 'demon core' of radioactive material killed 2 Manhattan Project scientists

Sat, 07/29/2023 - 08:10

image of Slotin using a screwdriver to hold open the spheres around the demon core — A recreation of the experiment shows how Louis Slotin used a screwdriver to hold open metallic half-spheres around the "demon core."
Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb wasn't without its own dangers.
Experiments on a so-called "demon core" of plutonium caused the deaths of two Manhattan Project physicists.
Both scientists died after their hands slipped, causing the core to release deadly levels of radiation.

The atomic bombs had been dropped.

But at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico, scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program led by J. Robert Oppenheimer that created the first nuclear weapons, were still experimenting with radioactive elements.