
How to die at Los Alamos - Hooke
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/02/13/how-to-die-at-los-alamos/
======
code_duck
Having grown up in the 80s, when Spider-Man's superpowers were attributed to a
radiactive spider rather than the modern day genetically engineered spider, in
the latter days that prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was
discussed as a possibility, radiation holds a special place in my heart.

Criticality accidents are my favorite type of disaster. For a time I was led
by a morbidly curiosity to research these incidents. Reading these, I sure am
glad I picked a career that's much safer than being a nuclear scientist!
Eyestrain and standing around all day is definitely preferable to a job where
if you move two pieces of metal together too quickly, you might see a blue
flash, feel a sensation of pins and needle sticking you in the face and mouth,
start vomiting and die two days later.

The article mentions the Demon Core, definitely a classic.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core)

Los Alamos has put together a couple of documents describing each known
incident. I find it fascinating to follow exactly how each miniature disaster
occurred. It's surprising, sort of, how dangerous these materials are and it
seems that certainly, one needs to take great care when reflecting neutrons.

[https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf](https://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf)
[PDF]

and an older one...

[http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-
bin/getfile?00314607.pdf](http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-
bin/getfile?00314607.pdf) [PDF]

~~~
hga
Initially I was going to say you're overstating the danger, but first I went
to Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Incidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident#Incidents)

Note the first one, where the system went critical simply because the
_scientist leaned too closely to it and neutrons bounced off his body_. Only
his alertness to some red indicator lamps and resulting quick action saved
him, vs. the 1st to die of this who in theory could have taken corrective
action before getting a fatal dose.

Then again past a certain point almost all of these resulted from violating
rules. Note from one of his autobiographies how Feynman was prepped to really
get the attention of the people running stuff at Oak Ridge I think it was if
he realized they'd created a system that might result in a criticality
accident.

Ah, and there's this big difference: I grew up a couple of decades earlier
than us, and still have my mother's Civil Defense Block Mother sign from the
late '60s. Back then the madness of MAD hadn't completely taken over and if
you were interested, the government was happy to train about how to survive a
nuclear war, which really isn't difficult at all if you're outside the
immediate effects range.

So to me radiation is to be respected, but it's an understood and mitigateble
danger. I'd rather work in this field than in a university synthetic chemistry
lab (one possible direction I could have gone if $$$ hadn't prevented me from
getting my undergraduate degree). Staying safe there requires _tremendously_
more knowledge of a _fantastically_ more complicated field, resisting too much
pressure to work when you're tired, _and trusting the others in the lab not to
screw up too badly_.

~~~
hga
An addendum of sorts to my last point. A friend I forwarded this to took
umbridge at blaming the smoke-pot explosion on the supervisor(s). So I looked
at it more closely and here's an edited version of the reply:

Actually, if you go to the official document, pg. 13-4, it's not that bad:

[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/19...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/1947-Exhibit-14-from-Los-Alamos-Project-Y-Book-II.pdf)

Especially since I have high school experience with potassium chlorate, a
dangerous oxidizer. E.g. I used classic chlorate and sugar plus nichrome
igniter wire plus my second generation rocket launcher device (both versions
having a physical key lockout, didn't trust my younger brothers) to do some
neat 4th of July fireworks stuff. E.g. add a small "bomb" of chlorate and
sugar to the igniter packet taped to the inside of one half of a cinderblock,
then arrange a gross of bottle rockets in that, and you can get an amazing
display due to the significant variations in their fuzing. Oh, BTW, this was
done in the middle of our lakes ^_^. In all this I somehow never managed to
burn myself.

Anyway, they mixed up their own witches brew to make the smudge pots, and
looking at the ingredients it's no surprise it exploded, and now looking up
smoke screen making on Wikipedia, you use either potassium chlorate _or_ if
using phosphorous, atmospheric oxygen or much tamer aluminum as oxidizers (the
latter for IR proof smoke), not both. Magnesium turnings are right out.

I.e. I had a better knowledge of chemistry and safety in high school than
these guys did. Reading between the lines they were clearly doing it this way
to have some fun as opposed getting the job done, in an area where you almost
certainly want to avoid random fires.

So, yeah, they should have been better supervised, access to these chemicals
should have been better controlled (i.e. a good clerk would have raised an
eyebrow if they tried to withdraw any single one of these chemicals except of
course the sugar, and any of the combinations...), and critically "no
disciplinary action could be taken." I agree with every one of the
recommendations.

And disciplinary action was almost certainly not needed, those who were held
at a degree of fault realized they'd let these "kids" kill or blind
themselves.

------
isomorphic
From this report I conclude that horses are 50% as dangerous to scientists as
unshielded plutonium cores.

~~~
calpaterson
That would not surprise me. Horse riding is an extremely dangerous hobby

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8339097.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8339097.stm)

~~~
hga
Very dangerous, period.

While reading the fantastic and highly recommended _Washington 's Crossing_
([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195170342/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195170342/)),
it became implicitly clear that the rebellion would have failed if Washington
hadn't been a _beyond superb_ horseman. Imagine having to direct battles on
snowy, icy nights....

------
Crito
> _" Manuel Salazar, janitor. With three friends (also janitors), got
> extremely drunk on muscatel wine mixed with ethylene glycol (antifreeze).
> Died from ethylene glycol poisoning on January 29, 1945. Because deaths were
> not result of duty, descendants received no benefits of compensation."_

Possible suicide-pact? Who in the world would mix wine with anti-freeze?
Accidentally mixing such a cocktail seems fairly unlikely. Was this some sort
of concoction mixed up by a researcher who was in the _" throw shit at the
wall and see what sticks"_ stage, which was tragically mistaken for
unadulterated wine?

~~~
tzs
Lots of people would mix antifreeze with wine. Adding antifreeze to food is
legal in the US at up to 50 g per kilogram. It's legal in Europe at up to 3 g
per kilogram [1]. Note that there are different kinds of antifreeze alcohols,
and not all of them are legal.

That doesn't always stop manufacturers. There was a big scandal in the '80s
with a small Austrian wine maker using the bad kind. This was the basis for
The Simpsons episode where Bart went to France as an exchange student and
ended up being forced to work at a winery that was putting antifreeze in and
making Bart drink it to see if they had put too much in.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-
monitor-29847999](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29847999)

~~~
ben1040
>This was the basis for The Simpsons episode where Bart went to France as an
exchange student and ended up being forced to work at a winery that was
putting antifreeze in and making Bart drink it to see if they had put too much
in.

And to go full circle with the topic of discussion (Los Alamos), the exchange
student visiting Springfield in this episode was really a spy agent visiting
to steal nuclear secrets.

------
VLM
Seems about a quarter of what you'd expect given my home town stats, but the
people probably tended toward young age, which the released death figures do
show. Safer to be a young dude at Los Alamos than an average age dude in the
midwest.

Interesting anecdote, the carpenter died the morning after Hiroshima. Most
real world cover ups are not x-files show material but tend toward "the driver
was up really late at the party last night". And it is interesting given the
modern puritan attitude toward drunk driving that this was the only accident
where blame was assigned. I would not be surprised if the driver had been out
late the night before celebrating and the foreman did not take that into
account thus getting recommended for firing. Or it was the foreman who was
still drunk from the night before, leading directly to the carpenters death
and destruction of .gov property.

