Kaku details the 1961 SL-1 reactor explosion in Idaho Falls, where a worker removed a control rod too far and was impaled on the ceiling by the blast. He recounts the near-catastrophe at the Fermi 1 breeder reactor outside Detroit in the 1960s, America's first commercial reactor meltdown, which was kept from the public even as evacuation plans were drawn up. The discussion extends to the ongoing instability at Chernobyl, where radiation levels still rise with every rainfall.
Art and Kaku examine the Windscale fire in England, a massive Soviet plutonium dump explosion in the Ural Mountains, and the dangerous state of commercial breeder reactors in France and Japan. Kaku reflects on Edward Teller's belief that nuclear plants belong underground and shares how his own family's internment during World War II shaped his critical perspective on nuclear technology.
Key Moments
Antimatter and the Theoretical Bomb: Kaku explains that no quantum bomb capable of shattering space and time is known, but an antimatter bomb would be the largest energy release achievable with future technology - a teaspoon of antimatter could obliterate any modern city, and a house-sized quantity could crack the Earth in half.
The One Number Hitler Got Wrong: Kaku argues a single piece of physics - the critical mass of uranium and plutonium needed to sustain a chain reaction - could have decided World War II. Hitler thought it required tons of enriched uranium and shelved the bomb program in favor of the V-1 and V-2 rockets.
Harry Daglian and the Tabletop Atomic Bomb: Kaku recounts the 1945 Los Alamos accident in which physicist Harry Daglian tripped, dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a plutonium core, briefly took the assembly supercritical, absorbed about 5,000 rads - ten times a lethal dose - and died in the lab hospital within weeks.
Tickling the Dragon's Tail: Kaku tells the story of Louis Slotin in 1946, who used a screwdriver to bring two plutonium hemispheres closer together, a procedure called 'tickling the dragon's tail.' When the Geiger counter pegged, he separated the hemispheres with his bare hands and was killed by the resulting burst.
America as the Original Proliferator: Kaku argues that North Korea's uranium technology came from Pakistan, which got it from Germany and the United States during the Reagan-era Afghan war; Iran, in his view, is correctly using legally available commercial nuclear technology, and the Atoms for Peace framework is fundamentally flawed.