Comment on Fun new game

• ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Yes, that’s the second arc.

  In the first accident there were no half-spheres, the neutrons were being reflected back using bars of tungsten carbide placed around the exposed core.

  Wiki photo from a recreation of the first incident: Image

  In the second accident, a year later, the reflective material was the two beryllium half-spheres. Shims were used to ensure the two halves were never fully closed, which would trigger the nuclear chain reaction.

  Supposedly, this guy liked to show off and had done this demonstration a dozen times in front of different audiences, wearing jeans and cowboy boots and using his screwdriver instead of the shims.

  Some report that Fermi told the guy and others that “they would be dead in a year” if they kept doing that… and voila.

  The good thing is that he at least was hunched over the core, so he mostly shielded everyone else in the room from the worst of the radiation by absorbing it himself. 9 days later, he was dead. The guy closest to him was in the hospital for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning, but at least survived but died fairly young, in his 50s, which may or may not have been related…

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  • bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Radiation sickness is such an awful way to go

    Still kinda want a 3D printer so I could model and print a demon core that shines blue light when you pull the screwdriver back lol. Would do amazing on a nightstand haha

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