Slashdot Mirror
Site of 1976 "Atomic Man" Accident To Be Cleaned
mdsolar writes with news about the cleanup of the site that exposed Harold McCluskey to the highest dose of radiation from americium ever recorded. Workers are finally preparing to enter one of the most dangerous rooms in the world — the site of a 1976 blast in the United States that exposed a technician to a massive dose of radiation and led to his nickname: the "Atomic Man." Harold McCluskey, then 64, was working in the room at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode. He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard. Hanford, located in central Washington state, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room was used to recover radioactive americium, a byproduct of plutonium. Covered with blood, McCluskey was dragged from the room and put into an ambulance headed for the decontamination center. Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank. During the next five months, doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin. Nurses scrubbed him down three times a day and shaved every inch of his body every day. The radioactive bathwater and thousands of towels became nuclear waste.
Funny, I would have thought 'the radioactive boy scout' would have had the most exposure to americium (stockpiled from smoke detectors). His house needed a similar clean up after.
Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank.
If they had the tech to do all that remotely, then why didn't they just handle the americium remotely?
I know, I know. Just a thought that popped into my head.
His treatment sort of worked. He ended up with a lot of bad health effects, but kept alive until he was 75, eleven years later. You read about old people living near Chernobyl and now Fukushima. Perhaps their age related decline leads to fewer ways for radiation to be lethal. The quick onset of leukemia seems to affect children more, for example. http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/late...
Not only did Harold get a dose that was way beyond the LD50 for humans, he lived for 11 more years and died of unrelated causes. His pastor had to convince people he was safe to be around.
Harold was far from the only Tri-Cities nuclear celebrity. There were also stories about guys who would drop their pants and squat over reactor vents until their balls got a little burned. Think of it like a nuclear vasectomy. I never documented any of those stories but there were a lot of them and worse.
One thing I did personally document was that, adjusted for age, the cancer rate for people who worked at Hanford was not statistically higher than that of the general population.
I achieved my own personal notoriety there by accidentally leaving my dosimeter in my shaving kit and leaving that on an orange Fiestaware platter that was so hot it would light up a pancake meter on three scales. A few weeks later I get a panic call from Rad Services asking if I'm okay. Hehe. God, I hated that place.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I know this will get modded down pretty quickly on Slashdot. This site is notoriously intolerant of the faithful, but that doesn't make it right. Have fun modding me down troll, just keep in mind you're doing it for the same reasons sectarian bigotry happens all over the world. No one thinks they're a bigot while they're being a bigot. And if you're teaching your kids this mentality at home? Shame on you.
Am I allowed to point how very wrong this particular belief of yours appears to be in reality, or is that off limits?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.