Posted on Dec 2, 2017
Remembering the Chicago Pile, the World’s First Nuclear Reactor
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That is One Way to Warm Up on a Cold December Morning
Remembering the Chicago Pile, the World’s First Nuclear Reactor
Posted from newyorker.com
Nuclear
American History
Chicago
University of Chicago
Science
Posted 8 y ago
Responses: 5
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin
Read this, trust me, he was the second, there was another listed besides him, it was depicted in the film Fat Man and Little Boy, I forger who depicted him, I'll look him up, well known actor, themfilmhad Paul Newman, other than this segmemtz it was abysmal, First Day, with Brian Denehy, was far more accurate, though this episode was not included, also, First Day went into the ALSOS mission into Germany look up the book ALSOS, I'll try to send it in....
Read this, trust me, he was the second, there was another listed besides him, it was depicted in the film Fat Man and Little Boy, I forger who depicted him, I'll look him up, well known actor, themfilmhad Paul Newman, other than this segmemtz it was abysmal, First Day, with Brian Denehy, was far more accurate, though this episode was not included, also, First Day went into the ALSOS mission into Germany look up the book ALSOS, I'll try to send it in....
Louis Alexander Slotin (1 December 1910– 30 May 1946) was a Canadian physicist and chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project. During World War II, Slotin conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He performed experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. On 21 May 1946, Slotin was conducting a demonstration when he accidentally initiated a fission reaction, which released a burst of hard...
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
The Demon Core was the nickname given to a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium that accidentally went critical on two separate instances at th...
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Capt Daniel Goodman
Yeah, that's it, there was a phrase used for diungnthat at that point, "tickling the dragon's tail", or something pretty close. I wasn't sure if you'd ever heard that, however, it was, if nothing else, apt, obviously, I remember who the actor was who played him in the Paul Newman film, it was John Cusack, i just remembered, just now.
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Capt Daniel Goodman
I can fathom why it was being done, though it was still obviously a really dumb experiment in retrospect. I'd also read a similar story about another of the group, where he'd had something pretty similar nearly happen. I can't recall where I'd seen it, maybe the famous book by I think the last name was Richard Rhodes, I believe, that was pretty comparable in terms of its sheer accidental stupidity at the time. As I recall, it didn't directly involve him; in his case, fortuitously, he was the one thankfully also smart enough to have prevented a similar catastrophe, I'll try to find a reference on it. I'm sure I can find the book, I just don't kmow if the book was one that'd actually have the reference about what I'd recalled reading, good catch on the video, in any event.
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I'd heard about the clinical aftereffects many of them had, also, had it been known they might've destroued all of Chicago, I think the populace at the time might well obviously have been seriously unemthused, you know? Obviously, it was wartime, and, of course, they didn't know just how dangerous of was, though, I'd expect Fermi probably suspected, he was really good, and probably knew, or certainly must've inferred, back when he'd been doing it, I would think, as I've read about it, over Tue years I've looked at the topic, that was really, really dangerous, in retrospect, necessary, certainly, but still really, really dangerous, the more I read about it....
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