The Demon Core was a 14-pound plutonium sphere at Los Alamos National Laboratory that caused two fatal radiation accidents in 1945: physicist Harry Daghlian died in August 1945 when he accidentally dropped a brick onto the core, causing it to go critical and flood his body with lethal radiation, and Louis Slotin died nine months later when a screwdriver slipped during an experiment, again causing the core to go critical; both men suffered agonizing deaths from radiation poisoning, and the same plutonium sphere was later used in the Nagasaki atomic bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
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The Demon Core: Plutonium Sphere That Killed Two Scientists and Destroyed a City
Added:Did you know a 14-pound metal ball killed two scientists and later helped destroy a city? The demon core looked harmless, just a sphere of plutonium sitting in a Los Alamos lab. But this innocent-looking object became one of the deadliest things on Earth. In August 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian was working alone late at night. He accidentally dropped a brick onto the core. Instantly, the room filled with a brilliant blue flash. Daghlian knew immediately what it meant. He was dead.
The plutonium had gone critical. A chain reaction flooded his body with lethal radiation. [music] Nine months later, Louis Slotin made his own fatal mistake.
A screwdriver slipped during an experiment. Again, that terrifying blue glow filled the room. Slotin calmly told his colleagues to mark their positions.
He knew they were all exposed. Both men died agonizing deaths from [music] radiation poisoning. Their bodies literally cooked from the inside. The demon core wasn't finished. Weeks later, it was loaded into a bomb and dropped on Nagasaki. One small sphere, three separate tragedies, hundreds of thousands dead.
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