3:20 PM. Los Alamos, New Mexico. Nuclear weapons expert Louis Slotin is lowering a beryllium covering over a plutonium core, a process he’s done dozens of times before. He uses a screwdriver to slowly lower the top covering, then the screwdriver slips, beryllium falls onto the plutonium, and the room lights up with a bluish flash. Slotin immediately throws the top covering off, letting it fall to the floor to stop the chain reaction, but it’s too late: he knows, better than anyone, that he’s already absorbed a lethal dose of radiation. Within hours, he begins vomiting; his relatives are flown to him to bid him farewell. He dies a week later. Three of the other seven scientists in the lab will also die from radiation several years later. Slotin has added years to their lives by acting as a “safety device” by removing the beryllium. The plutonium core of that Mark-3 bomb had already killed another of his co-workers the year before and was therefore nicknamed the Demon Core. It was decided to detonate it in a test at Bikini Atoll, but it was ultimately melted down to make other nuclear warheads.
