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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.
What, wasn't their faith in god strong enough? It works wonders for children without vaccinations...
Meh
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.
Only the holy glow :)
Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank.
So, what was his body temperature?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
A lot of the background for this article* comes from a 1984 piece in People Magazine, in some cases word for word:
http://www.people.com/people/a...
*It's an AP wire service piece
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The important thing to remember here is that he survived 500 times the maximum dose a worker can be legally exposed to.
Try that with any chemical in any chemical plant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-DYM7JvMA
" when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode"
any idea what that was?
My engineering brain struggles to find a heavy metal reaction that is unexpected. Oh, and enormous sympathy to HM, that's a horrible way to die.
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...
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Oh, I forgot. He was 64 years old at that time.
First Law of Superpowerdynamics: Only well muscled young men with washboard abs and manboob pecs get super powers
Second Law of Superpowerdynamics: Superpowers will make you wear your underwear over your pants.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
they will use this method to clean up the site.
The note would say "I am highly radioactive put the money in the bag."
a typical resident of bangor maine.
The summary should have mentioned that he died of coronary artery disease, not of radiation exposure. The accident was terrible, sure, but the summary has led some to believe that he died of radiation exposure - which is terrible in a different way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
But that's not important right now.
Undue fear of radiation is very prevalent. In this case, the man initially suffered more from the actual explosion than from the massive dose of radiation, and over time he overcame the radiation related issues even though his exposure was on the order of hundreds of times greater than safety limits. Heart disease is what killed him.
Whether you think its Intentional or not, you can always count on mdsolar to submit anything he can find that says nuclear and there is something bad that happened.
As far as I am aware the highest radiation dose anyone has received was Cecil Kelley, whom was exposed to a criticality accident at a plutonium processing plant. When the tank stirrer turned on, the geometry of the plutonium solution became critical, exposing him to ~12,000 rem. He died 36 hours later.
See Page 16 for a description of the accident here: http://ncsp.llnl.gov/basic_ref/la-13638.pdf
Or the wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accident
That incident wasnt contamination but exposure to radiation to a subcritical mass.
The fillings in the guys teeth got sufficient radiation (neutrons) that the isotopes changed to radioactives that burned his mouth.
Died within days.
"over time he overcame the radiation related issues".
Yeah, the several heart attacks he had, problems with his eyes (cataract surgery on both eyes, cornea transplant), lack of stamina, kidney infections, drop in blood platelet count (and the need of transfusions), etc.
But he did overcame the radiation damage related problems eventually... when he died.
Most people who avoid vaccinations do it for non-religious reasons, not that low information commenters care.
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
Did he grow to 50 feet tall and rampage around Las Vegas?
I would think the article would explain *why* the building is being demolished (which sounds like an extremely good way to cause radioactive particles to escape into the environment).
Are they building condos? What's the story?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
See God invented Mexican food first. After that the Big Bang was inevitable.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
No, following the negative miracle is the correct order. The person whom the negative miracle was inflicted on is merely praying for the intercession of the divine being to stop the causing negative miracles. Literally, they are praying to God, asking God to 'dam' the flow of negative miracles.
So it is not cursing at all unless saying 'Hoover Dam' has become a curse.
Of course, many non-believers use a similar curse phrase that nay lead to confusion. The just and enlightened believers are merely praying for and end to the flood of negative miracles.
They should really be wondering what sins they have committed that lead to divine wrath being brought down upon them, and begin wallowing in guilt, powerless to act.
Sure, but what does that have to do with the straw man the GP set up? This story is about a very specific accident and doesn't sensationalize it into "all radiation is extremely bad" like the straw man does. We could have an interesting debate about it, but instead ericloewe wants to use it as a platform for attacking people who don't, for a variety of genuine and rational reasons, like nuclear power.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I agree its an interesting story. It really has nothing at all to do with nuclear power. But its also fair to point out trends where the evidence is obvious to anyone who looks, and that is some submitters have an agenda. Consistent submittable of headlines that have nuclear and negative connotations is intended to have an overall impact. Many here don't notice it, so I point it out. Many don't distinguish between nuclear power and other nuclear activities. Many don't read beyond the summary. That's what the submitter counts on.
Any doubts, just look up the submittal history yourself.
Which incident was this? The guy in the article lived another 11 years and died of other causes.
I'm aware of some WWII accidents but none spring to mind with that teeth description.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I did some google searching, and all I can find is "He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard".
When I don't see actual numbers, I get suspicious. Plus, it had the qualifier "from the chemical element americium". Some articles were otherwise copy-n-paste but left out th Americium qualifier. As we all know, there have been some boo-boos with plutonium and things like Chernobyl that resulted in immediate death.
All the articles extant seem to have been be copy and pasted from each other back in the 1970-80's, so that 500 times number would be related to the safety standards of 1976.
For one thing there are two different numbers to consider: the instantaneous dose or level of radiation, and the cumulative dose. There's a big difference between getting 10 Sieverts in an hour and getting it over 50 years.
I have to wonder if what we're talking about with Mckluskey is a cumulative dose because he had it inside him for years.
Has anyone seen an actual number in Sieverts or equivalent?
Can we please get an editor here to downmod this anti-nuclear power cocksucker? Thanks!
He was placed in isolation in a decontamination facility for five months. Within a year, his body's radiation count had fallen by about 80 percent and he was allowed to return home.
But his radiation-related medical problems proliferated. He had a kidney infection, four heart attacks in as many months and cataract surgery on both eyes, followed by a cornea transplant and a precipitous drop in his blood platelet count, which required transfusions.
Friends at first avoided him until his minister told people it was safe to be around him. The accident sapped his stamina, and he was unable to hunt, fish or do any of the things he had planned for his retirement. He was studied extensively by doctors for the rest of his life and died of coronary artery disease in 1987 at the age of 75.
Actually his autopsy showed that if he had not been old and died of heart disease he would have developed various cancers in time.
If anything, it's the "radiation is safe!!" brigade that is ignorant.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Just about everyone on the planet would eventually get cancer if they didn't die. But in this case, where the dose was so extreme, many envision a quick, miserable, cancerous death. But to those knowledgeable, there is little surprise that cancer spread was comparatively minimal. In reality, cancer isn't likely to happen even in very high exposure scenarios. Since you are more likely to win the lottery than ever get even a small percentage of this dose, even if you work directly with nuclear fuel, waste, power, or processing, the fears we hear are clearly out of line with the real risks.
The life on our planet was shaped while bathed in radiation. If you are afraid of it, do yourself a favor and learn more.
There is no straw man, if anything it's AmiMoJo who introduced one.
Nobody was discussing an "imaginary, fearful hoard of idiots". The discussion was about a very specific group of people, who was then identified with a larger group that acts in a similar way.