What is the demon core?

Let's build a nuke. Don't ask me why, it's for a school project (no suspicious stuff going on here at all haha). First of all, we need to understand what a nuke is. A nuke uses nuclear power, which is generated by destroying atoms. But how are we going to destroy those atoms? Well, that's the job of the metallic core of the nuke. The core is made out of to hemispheres of highly radioactive material like uranium or plutonium. If the two hemispheres close in on each other, everything explodes. That's why these cores always have a ring to prevent everyting from going wrong. But what if you decide to tickle the dragon's tail, and remove this ring? What if you decide to be a dumbass, and play with highly radioactive material until it explodes? That's what happened on August 21 in 1945, wich is called the "demon core incident".

Tickling the dragon's tail

Imagine you're a scientist. You stand in front of the nuclear core, and there are no safety precautions at all. The only thing to keep everyting from going wrong is a single screwdriver seperating the hemispheres. You should pobably stay away fom this screwdriver. But on second thought, if you remove the screwdriver, you don't have to go work tomorrow. Do you know what Robert Oppenheimer, father of the nuclear bomb, thought when he saw it exploding? “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Why can't i be Death, too?

The voices in your head win, and you remove the screwdriver. Oopsie daisy! You and another scientist just died, and a lot of your coworkers got sick from nuclear radiation! I wonder how this happened? I have no clue! It's not like 14 lb of plutonium-gallium is dangerous or something...

Okay, i'll admit, i exaggerated a bit for comedic effect. Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin (the scientists who died), did not hear voices in their head or did anything on purpose. One of their hands slipped while working on the demon core which caused their agonizing deaths, and that is not something that should be laughed at.

Where is the demon core now?

The demon core does not exist anymore. It caused one more incident in 1946, after that it got melted down and recast into a new weapon, and it was eventually destroyed in a nuclear test.