Comments on: U Chicago Prof Dies of Plague? https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/ Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:58:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Art https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545960 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:58:43 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545960 Louis P. Slotin is the last, certainly not the least, on this list that shows that research, particularly nuclear research, has cost lives:

http://www.atomicheritage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=92

]]> By: Joshua Zelinsky https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545959 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:38:57 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545959 Yes, although Slotin was actually the second radiation fatality at Los Alamos. The first was actually Harry Daghlian in an accident very similar to that with Slotin. For some reason he is forgotten. Slotin and Daghlian aren’t in quite the same category as Casadaban and Wetterhan in that the dangers of critical configurations of plutonium were understood by the time they did their work. There were multiple issues going on there including that they didn’t have very carefully outlined safety procedures and in both the cases of Slotin and Daghlian there were minor violations of normal protocol that had become routine. In the Slotin case at least, the use of a screwdriver rather than a shim may have contributed to the slip which resulted in the formation of the critical mass. In Slotin’s case, a lot of people owe their lives to his quick thinking and reacting.

(Now moving very off topic, I wondering if Slotin was an inspiration for the Stargate SG-1 episode where Daniel Jackson hand disassmbles a configuration about to go critical.)

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545958 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:11:29 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545958 Don’t forget Louis P. Slotin.

]]> By: Joshua Zelinsky https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545957 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:03:03 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/22/u-chicago-prof-dies-of-plague/#comment-545957 There seems to be some similarity to the situation of Karen Wetterhan here. Wetterhan was a chemist at Dartmouth who was working with dimethylmercury and following all the safety precautions. Despite that, she ended up with mercury poisoning that killed here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn

Sometimes we just don’t understand the risks involved with something until after a serious problem (the Curies come to mind also in that respect). And sometimes there are just freak accidents.

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