The refined plutonium was shipped from the Hanford Site in Washington state to the Los Alamos Laboratory an inventory document dated August 30 shows Los Alamos had expended "HS-1, 2, 3, 4 R-1" (the components of the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs) and had in its possession "HS-5, 6 R-2", finished and in the hands of quality control. Both died following supercriticality accidents involving the "demon core". The two physicists Harry Daghlian (center left) and Louis Slotin (center right) during the Trinity Test. Physicists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and died soon after, while others present in the lab were also exposed. Both experiments were designed to demonstrate how close the core was to criticality with a tamper, but in each case, the core was accidentally placed into a supercritical configuration. It was involved in two criticality accidents at the Los Alamos Laboratory on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each resulting in a fatality. The core was prepared for shipment as part of the third nuclear weapon to be used in Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained at Los Alamos for testing and potential later use. The demon core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb. The sphere of plutonium is surrounded by neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide blocks.
A re-creation of the experiment involved in the 1945 incident.
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