Complete disintegration of body functions, how dangerous is critical testing? Why is there no cure for radiation damage?

There is no need to say much about the power of the atomic bomb, as history has proven it to us.

But people only know that the atomic bomb is extremely powerful when it explodes, but they don’t know that making an atomic bomb is also an extremely dangerous thing, especially the critical test in the process of making an atomic bomb. Once an accident occurs, the consequences are extremely serious. So how dangerous is the critical test? Why is there no cure for radiation damage? Let’s start from the late World War II. In the late World War II, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, which accelerated the process of Japan’s surrender. But in fact, the Manhattan Project of the United States not only prepared two atomic bombs, but also a third one. Japan surrendered in time, so the third one was saved, which laid the groundwork for the two tragic accidents that followed.

Although the two atomic bombs dropped by the United States caused huge damage, they are far inferior to the atomic bombs produced today.

The United States naturally understood that the power of the atomic bomb needed to be further improved, so after the end of World War II, it began to study the remaining nuclear bomb. In order to increase the explosive power of an atomic bomb, it is necessary to achieve the best explosion effect. In order to achieve the best explosion effect, it is necessary to find out the exact number of fissile materials required for the nuclear bomb explosion. Because if there is less fissile material, the nuclear bomb will be difficult to detonate, and if there is more fissile material, the atomic bomb will explode directly, so it is necessary to find out the critical point of detonating the nuclear bomb, and the more accurate the critical point, the better the explosion effect of the atomic bomb, and to understand the critical point, it is necessary to conduct critical tests.

Criticality testing simply involves manually operating the reflector and seeing how many neutron reflections are needed to ensure that the core is close to criticality.

This experiment requires very high control accuracy. Any slight mistake may lead to a critical accident. This terrible accident really happened, and more than once. The first accident occurred in August 1945. At this time, Japan had not yet officially signed the unconditional surrender, but the United States had begun a new round of research and testing using the subcritical mass plutonium balls needed for the third atomic bomb. The first victim was a researcher named Harry. Harry is a cautious researcher. Before the accident, he was building a neutron reflector by stacking tungsten carbide bricks. Just when he added the last tungsten brick, the system sounded an alarm, indicating the risk of supercriticality.

Harry was a researcher who strictly followed the operating procedures. He immediately took back the tungsten brick, but an accident happened at this time and the tungsten brick accidentally fell into the center of the plutonium sphere.

This was going to be a big deal. Fortunately, Harry did not panic and immediately manually dismantled the tungsten carbide pile, preventing a major accident from happening. However, he himself was also exposed to an extremely high dose of radiation. In the following 25 days, Harry suffered a lot. Excessive radiation caused his DNA to break throughout his body, and he eventually died in a horrible way. Harry's accident sounded the alarm for the United States, and a new safety regulation was immediately introduced, that is, at least two researchers must participate in critical experiments. The second victim was a major participant in the Manhattan Project. His name was Slotin. He and Harry were both colleagues and friends, but their personalities were different. Slotin was a very courageous researcher.

Perhaps because he had full confidence in his abilities, Slotin often violated safety regulations in his past research, but he was able to escape danger each time with his superb skills. However, he was not so lucky this time.

In 1946, Slotin and seven other researchers conducted a critical test on the plutonium ball. During the experiment, Slotin used his left hand to grab the half ball and used a screwdriver to keep the half ball separated. As a result, the screwdriver accidentally fell and the upper part of the half ball fell off, causing a critical reaction. After the accident, Slotin quickly covered the entire critical test pile with his body. His suicidal behavior successfully prevented the seven researchers from receiving excessive radiation.

Eventually, Slotin's body functions completely disintegrated and he died nine days later.

Why is radiation damage so terrible and incurable? Because all our body tissues are made up of cells, and the synthesis of cells depends on the transcription and replication of DNA, which is composed of various molecular structures. Ionizing radiation will directly cause the electrons in atoms or molecules to be ionized into a free state. If the structure of atoms and molecules is destroyed, DNA will break, and then the cells will not be able to synthesize, so the cells of the body tissues will only die, without regeneration, and eventually die. Of course, small doses of radiation will not cause us fatal damage, and the body can also repair itself, but if it is an extremely large dose of radiation, it will cause DNA breaks throughout the body. This damage is irreversible and naturally cannot be cured.

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