This is the sort of high-brow memery I’ve come to expect from Lemmy
It’s demon core kun!
That was hilarious. Also kinda spooky to think that, if Japan hadn’t surrendered, Demon Core-kun would have been the 3rd nuke dropped over them.
The cartoon only covers the second story arc though, the one with the screwdriver.
In the first arc, the core is “nude” and they’re stacking neutron-reflecting bricks around it to bring it close to criticality. A scientist drops a brick by accident on top of the core and boom, blue light and you’re dead (takes 2 weeks for your body to notice though).
Wasn’t it the screwdriver? Or is that the second arc?
Yes, that’s the second arc.
In the first accident there were no half-spheres, the neutrons were being reflected back using bars of tungsten carbide placed around the exposed core.
Wiki photo from a recreation of the first incident:
In the second accident, a year later, the reflective material was the two beryllium half-spheres. Shims were used to ensure the two halves were never fully closed, which would trigger the nuclear chain reaction.
Supposedly, this guy liked to show off and had done this demonstration a dozen times in front of different audiences, wearing jeans and cowboy boots and using his screwdriver instead of the shims.
Some report that Fermi told the guy and others that “they would be dead in a year” if they kept doing that… and voila.
The good thing is that he at least was hunched over the core, so he mostly shielded everyone else in the room from the worst of the radiation by absorbing it himself. 9 days later, he was dead. The guy closest to him was in the hospital for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning, but at least survived but died fairly young, in his 50s, which may or may not have been related…
Radiation sickness is such an awful way to go
Still kinda want a 3D printer so I could model and print a demon core that shines blue light when you pull the screwdriver back lol. Would do amazing on a nightstand haha
In the future, every kid will have one of this.
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Right next to the pinball machines.
Lmao, watched the musical this past weekend with visiting fam, would recommend
That might explain a few things.
I’m not smart enough to understand this…
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What was the point of these approaching criticality experiments anyways?
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Yeah, the showing off is what I was getting at. The first experiment seemed more like an experiment and an accident but the demonstrations with the screwdriver seemed more like someone doing pull-ups over a fatal drop just to show how badass they are and accidentally landing on other people on the bottom when he slipped.
Thanks for the in depth response though, this gives more context to this than I’ve had before.
And just guessing on the other two attitudes before looking anything up (haha maybe wanting to challenge my intuition like this instead of just looking it up is one), one is probably related to laziness (eg assuming something is fine and doesn’t need to be checked when going through the pre flight checklist). And maybe the other is being too trusting or not assertive enough (eg colleague says something is OK, you don’t fully believe them but don’t challenge them on it). Am I close?
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I definitely was not that smart. That was a very interesting read though. I would totally be the guy that drops a brick on it…
If youre not clicking the link: the smaller ball is a famous sphere of plutonium for use in a nuclear bomb (wouldve been the third one dropped on japan) that killed a lot of people in multiple lab accidents. The larger thing is its receptacle/shielding, which is open in these photos (which would kill everyone in the room)
Imagine a cursed evil (or maybe just anti imperialist) sword that never got a handle attached, but it’s…not a sword.
Actually, open is good. When the shield (really a reflector) is closed, the core goes critical. Basically, the shield is made of mirrors that reflect neutrons back into the core, knocking more neutrons loose which then get reflected back in, at the point of criticality creating a feedback loop that will run away- a huge explosion. The closer the sphere is to fully closed, the more energy generated and the more radiation emitted.
Oh, i remember the story about the guy doing a party trick sith a screwdriver and killing the whole room. Thing in pic looked similar.
Yeah that’s the point. The screwdriver kept it open (the “safe” configuration) and when the screwdriver was removed it closed (killing everyone)
Oh! Got it. So its the putting it back on in the pics that causes the everybody being dead?
Yws, and that would be the goal of the little boy that’s playing the game
Amazing!
Rad!
Daaaad
