Sky-High Radiation Found in Fukushima Fish

[longship]

35. A Clarification

About Teller. He was an asshole. So many people said so. History will not be kind to him. He helped found the Livermore lab, IIRC, when he had become a pariah at Los Alamos, from which he resigned when he couldn't get his way. Teller might have been brilliant, but he was petulant and difficult to control and ideologically unmoveable, not a good tact for a scientist.

Oppie was different in character. Yes, he helped himself self-destruct. But Teller really stuck the knife in his back and twisted it. Remember, this was about McCarthyism, not atomic physics, and Teller and Oppie were on opposite sides, politically. Science took a back seat. It destroyed Oppie, as we both know. I do not dispute that Oppie did little to help his case.

On Teller's dud, I miss remembered the info. You were correct. It wasn't the George test, whose purpose was a demonstration of Teller's original ideas. It worked, albeit not a full scale demonstration, which was never meant to be.

I was speaking of the full scale Koon test, which had a predicted yield of one megaton and yielded 110 kilotons, a dud by any measure. It was the first thermonuclear out of Teller's team at Livermore, an alarm clock design. That was the one I recalled.

Finally, my friend, if you wish to be respected on these forums, please stop calling people names. I am no revisionist historian. It has been years since I read this history and my recall was inaccurate. I will gladly admit my errors but I do not like being called names. You would do well to not be so petulant. I will promise the same.