I realize this isn't a popular opinion, but it bothers me how those who depict the tragedy of an accident like this seem to do so in the service of painting a dangerous picture of atomic energy, and they do it by ignoring and overlooking other accidental deaths. The Manhattan Project moved blazingly fast, and people died in vehicle accidents, fires, electrocutions, and more. Every death was tragic and represented a life cut short. But it seems like much has been written of Louis Slotin's accident while very little is said of the many others who died more "conventionally".<p>This is part of the reason that many people have an exaggerated fear of nuclear power when, in fact, the accidental death rate from it (even when you include Chernobyl) is far less than that of petroleum, hydro, and even wind - in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude. It's one of the safest energy sources, but takes a front-seat as the villain of the play when it comes to most articles by media, especially legacy media.
<i>"A careless slip"</i> really undersells all of the deliberate bad decisions that set the stage for a single slip to have such devastating consequences. Imagine I have decided to balance a bucket of burning gasoline on my head. One slip is disastrous, but focusing on the slip seems myopic.
A dramatization of the accident was part of the film Fat Man and Little Boy, clip below:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY</a><p>A little more factual dramatization was presented in the TV show Dark Matters titled "Risky Radiation" but I am unable to locate a video clip atm.<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421370/?ref_=ttep_ep4" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421370/?ref_=ttep_ep4</a>
Kudos to the article for not fuelling radiation-related fears!<p>Slotin died because a stupid, preventable accident, and Plutonium is indeed dangerous. But stupid, preventable accidents happen in many industries and they are just as lethal. I appreciate that the events are well described, but no unnecessary rethoric is added to that.<p>(I'm still burnt by the amount of gut-wrenching drama they added in Chernobyl)
A long time ago I mentioned this story to my dad, an engineer of the mechanical kind. He said, in his simple way, why was the system built that way? Why not lift the core up rather than drop the reflector down? If anything goes wrong, the default is it stops.<p>I know it’s silly but I think of what he said often. So many times the solution to a problem at work is to bring in more tech, another stack, more complexity while in his world it was “what can we take out of this loop so there’s less to go wrong?”<p>I wonder what he’d think of modern engine power trains and all their gubbins.
Pop-culture tangent: Does anyone know if Slotin's story was the inspiration for Dr. Manhattan's orgin story in _The Watchmen_? Many resonances between the two.
jeez this is evergreen.<p>I wonder if it's because it shows instances of profound stupidity among people we tend to credit as very smart, or if it's just fascination with the exotic and dangerous world of criticality.<p>unfortunate that it kind of gives oxygen to the "nuclear cooties" phobia.
What's crazy about the Slotin incident is that it occurred in 1946, months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. This wasn't some unavoidable "race to beat the Nazis to the bomb" accident, it was just tragic sloppiness.