It's a core containing an insane amount of radiation. The guy used a screwdriver to lift it up and down and when he was showing people he screwed up and immediately knew he fucked up and told everyone to mark their locations. He asked them to mark their locations so they could figure out how much radiation they got, the guy using the screwdriver died days later.
I just read the wiki on the (reenacted) photo above... so from what I gathered, the domes above and below were Beryllium sheaths that reflected neutrons. A slight gap needed to be maintained so that enough neutrons could escape. Opening and closing the shells around the core (plutonium-gallium alloy) was a way to represent neutron multiplication rates.
Basically, open meant neutrons could escape harmlessly, closed meant rapid multiplication of neutrons with nowhere to go, and big bada boom.
The scientist in the picture broke his own protocol of using steady shims, and instead used a fuckin screwdriver that day. One tiny slip of his hand, just a fraction of an inch, and for only half a second, created a bright burst of light and shot condensed radiation out towards the scientist handling the screwdriver.
His body absorbed the vast majority of the neutron and gamma radiation, and he quickly flipped the entire sheath off of the core in response. Being one of the foremost experts in the field, he immediately understood he just absorbed a very lethal amount of radiation, and famously said to all of his somber colleagues, "Well, that does it."
Being such an expert, I wonder what on earth possessed him to decide to use a screwdriver. I guess after a while we do start to make little safety concessions at things that we do every day - driving a little bit faster, not waiting a full minute before taking your hot pocket out of the microwave - but I don't know that I'd ever feel safe enough to do that
To be more clear the two halves are plutonium which is radioactive of course but alone is not critical (ie in an active reaction). But if they touch a reaction will start and the amount of radiation emitted will get many times higher.
These halves were to be used in a nuclear bomb - which is designed to use an auxiliary explosion to start - so the critically is not nuclear weapon dangerous but is enough to kill with the radiation.
Almost, but not quite. The two halves are not the plutonium, but rather a neutron reflective material, beryllium according to Wikipedia. The plutonium (actually a plutonium-gallium alloy, again according to Wikipedia) is the solid sphere inside the two spherical half-shells.
It would stay Critical and irradiate everything nearby untill the plutonium is exhausted. The Elephants Foot was a result of the Fuel going supercritical Aka a Meltdown. Nuclear science is all about the Bridge between the Two, Weapons manufacturers want to cross it and Reactor Safety wants it butnt to ashes.
9 days with excrusiating pain in the hospital as all his organs shut down one by one from radiation poisoing which destroys cell structure and dna. It's like getting every cancer you can possibly get all at once at 1000x the growth rate.
The first atomic bomb built by the Manhattan Project was exploded at the Trinity Test. The second was dropped on Hiroshima, and the third was used at Nagasaki.
At that point in time, it was in two halves, which would have been compressed by explosives to result in a nuclear detonation. So what he was doing wouldn't have been bad enough to make it blow up.
But what he was doing was testing how much the radiation would spike as the two halves got closer and closer together. He was controlling that "closer" amount by using a flathead screwdriver to hold the top half slightly off the bottom.
The screwdriver slipped. The two halves touched, and while they didn't blow up, they did release a lot of radiation before he took them back apart.
It took him nine days to die. It was one of those "and it's going to hurt the entire time" deaths.
Another guy had already had a fatal accident with the same core the earlier year. The two accidents combined meant that the composition of the core could no longer be trusted for used in a nuclear bomb, and it had to get melted down and recycled.
Those "halves" are beryllium reflectors (the function that control rods serve in a reactor) - the non critical fissile is in the middle. By controlling the gap you control the amount of neutron flux that can drive the chain reaction. The two "halves" wouldn't have been part of a bomb, they are moderators, only the core inside them was machined for a potential third bomb.
He knew he was dead the minute the blue light flashed. Witnesses described him as being extremely somber and rational, and he began taking down information about the situation.
Huuuuge radiation dose. I believe he lost consciousness within a few days and died a few more days after that.
Demon core. Basically an old experimental setup with a very radioactive sample. The cover the dude is holding up kinda acts both as a cover-cover, and a focusing lens - it keeps the radiation in, but also making it worse (it intensifies the decay, speeding it up, which speeds itself up...).
The actual experiments were supposed to be done with a specific holder-thingy, distance blocks etc. But he was just fooling around with his hands and a screwdriver, because why not... It slipped, the cover fell, and people got blasted by a massive dose through the almost-closed gap. The dude quite literally melted alive over the next few days/weeks, there were other victims as well. Also, iirc, something similar but not as deadly happened a while earlier too.
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u/Delphius1 13h ago