L'Incroyable Fabrication du Plutonium

On May 21, 1946, 35-year-old physicist Louis Slotin was conducting a high-stakes experiment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He was using a simple flathead screwdriver to manipulate a 6.2-kilogram plutonium core, nicknamed the Demon Core, by propping up a beryllium tamper. The screwdriver slipped just a fraction of an inch, causing the core to go prompt critical. A massive burst of neutron radiation hit Slotin instantly, appearing as a flash of blue light and a wave of heat.