Re: Q: Historical Criticality Accident in 1945

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 06:23 18.11.1999 -0600, you wrote:
>Just checked to Memorial site of Harry Daghlian,
>http://members.tripod.com/~Arnold_Dion/Daghlian/
>
>My question: Weren´t there two people who died in the
>accident (I am also looking at a list from IAEA)?
>How about the name Louis Slotin?
>
>Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

I have not checked the Memorial site you mentioned. According to my book
"The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age", Copyright 1989 by Greenpeace
Communications Ltd., Harry Daghlian had shortly before WW II during
experiments with fissionable material received a deadly dose (the
experiment is not described in my book) "and Daghlian had to die as the
first North American because of acute radiation sickness". "Slotin had been
the physicist who helped the medical doctors to estimate the radiation dose
absorbed by Daghlian...." The accident, which ended deadly for Slotin,
happened long after the war (21. Mai 1946) and was related to nuclear tests
at Bikini. I have read several versions of what has happened - not only the
Greenpeace version - but all of them agree that Mr. Slotin had conducted an
unexcusable violation of every safety precautions and of common sense,
namely to let two subcritical spheres of plutonium (according to Greenpeace
the same pieces, which caused Daghlians death) coming close together, using
a screwdriver (!!!!) as his instrument of determining the distance of the
two spheres. When the screwdriver distance holder failed a chain reaction
occurred. Mr. Slotin died, but he had put other people - he was
"demonstrating" his skills to visitors according to Greenpeace and other
sources - at very high risk, who seem to have survived. 


You who know my critical opinion against Greenpeace and similar groups
might be surprised to read a citation of a Greenpeace book. Yes, this book
is excellent, you find a lot of material about different accidents and a
lot of background information. It seems to me that the description of the
accidents and most of the background information is correct - but of course
the conclusions drawn by Greenpeace are the problem..... So if you are able
to withstand many (not all) of the conclusions I really seriously recommend
this book to everybody. To gather this widespread information from other
sources would keep you busy for months!


Best regards,

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at

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