Summary of the USCSB safety video "Incompatible Chemicals: Explosion at AB Specialty Silicones"
Summary of the USCSB safety video "Incompatible Chemicals: Explosion at AB Specialty Silicones"
i grew up close-ish to the nuclear (weapons) industry and let me tell you that stuff is not handled any better
"store the plutonium in two different places so you don't get a criticality" sounds simple enough until those two different places turn out to be on opposite sides of the same wall
this was a representative incident. stuff like this kept happening
reminds me of that one time they did testing on criticality for nuclear reactors, which they did in an open vat with a mirror pointed at it so the camera could see what's going on down there.
there's a whole video of the process of increasing reactivity in steps (which was digitallu recorded at a slightly too slow speed so the voice sounds really creepy) and finally the whole thing just explodes after the entire vat of water is instantly turned into steam.
which made a mess, and now it's probably a superfund site or whatever
i hadn't heard that story but it absolutely sounds like something that would have happened