| The nervousness the Americans feel over nuclear proliferation is understandable; they have not forgotten their own inept own experiments when first handling uranium. During the early stages of their discoveries of the lethal uses of nuclear energy, American scientists needed to find out how two lumps of radioactivity uranium could be made to go ‘critical’, and set off a chain by which millions of uranium atoms would split almost simultaneously in an unprecedented release of energy. |
| A young scientist of Russian extraction called Louis Slotin volunteered to conduct the experiment. ‘His only instruments were two screwdrivers which he used to slide to hemispheres of uranium towards each other. He watched with intense concentration to discover when the uranium first became critical and the chain reaction started. The result of this and other experiments produced the first American atomic bomb. Less than a year later, Slotin, while carrying out a similar experiment, allowed his screwdriver to slip. The uranium became critical. ‘Slotin bravely tore the hemisphere apart with his hands and stopped the chain reaction. This saved the lives of the other scientists in the room. Slotin himself died in agony nine days later from the radiation he had received.’ |
Published in THE NATION 3 July 1993, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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