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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.
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.
In case you are serious, "hot" is a euphemism for someone or something having a high degree of radioactivity. Nothing to do with temperature.
The only thing ignorant people fear more than science in general is "radiation". The reasons for the quotation marks would make for a very long rant about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation and their complete ignorance of what is actually going on.
Typically they pray to god for healing, then see a doctor and take medical treatment, then thank god when they get better. The order of the first two steps varies. A few will skip the doctor part and either heal spontaneously (praise the lord!) or die, but most are quite happy to live with the contradiction.
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.
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...
The process involved nitric acid and a large resin column (probably an ion exchange column). Probably it was forming some nitrates and these decomposed.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Funny, after the accident, Harold McCluskey was very pro-nuclear. Stating that what happened was little more than an industrial accident (assuming that the Wikipedia entry is to be trusted).
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Oh, I forgot. He was 64 years old at that time.
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Second Law of Superpowerdynamics: Superpowers will make you wear your underwear over your pants.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The prayer is often for the doctor being competent.
Just so you are informed. Religious reasons for no vaccination is very low on the list and is mainly from groups such as the Amish and the main reason Amish don't vaccinate is not for religious reason but items such as since they are closed community the risk is not as high.
The biggest reasons for people not going with vaccines are not trusting of "big" science and vaccines are loaded with all those chemicals, similar to GMO.
The note would say "I am highly radioactive put the money in the bag."
Why does every discussion of anything nuclear related almost immediately turn into a straw man argument against some imaginary, fearful hoards of idiots? Why are do so insecure about it?
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your comment reminds me of the saying "God heals, and the doctor sends the bill".
Yes, modern medicine is great, but after a while you realize that doctors are shooting in the dark half the time.
I've been witness to numerous "negative miracles", where the divine hand of our Lord decides to inflict his wrath upon some unworthy subject. It often does result in a "God Damnit!", so your hypothesis seems reasonable.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It would be an impressive miracle indeed, aside from the bit about having an immune system and mitosis-capable cells. Life is actually pretty good at fixing itsself without supernatural aid. It seems suspicious that God is so eager to heal infections, yet never helps out any amputees.
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.
In fairness, I know scientists who are religious and believe in evolution and all the rest of the science, and see God as being outside of all of that, and see the Bible as being allegorical on the points which conflict with science.
Religion isn't always tied with being irrational like the crazies we sometimes see.
Hell, when I went to university there was still a Jesuit teaching physics. He saw no conflict whatsoever between science and religion.
I'm certainly not saying there aren't those who are a little overzealous in their interpretations, but there are many many people who aren't.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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
Are you aware of the fact there were several decades in which the threat of nuclear war hung over everybody's heads, and the information being given out didn't include these details?
Anybody over 40 probably remembers several years of bomb drills, or the Bay of Pigs, or all sorts of things which most scared the bejeezus out people?
Even when Reagan got elected there was still a lot of fear that some idiot was going to let loose some nukes, and the rhetoric was quite high.
People were given far more fear than scientific information.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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
What, wasn't their faith in god strong enough? It works wonders for children without vaccinations...
In some cases, even religious people will trust science ... (though not enough if other persons are affected)
Seriously, have we gotten to the point that we're actually bigoted against all religions?
73% of Americans believe in God: http://www.pewforum.org/2012/1...
41% trust scientists, with another 46% trusting them "Somewhat" http://www.asanet.org/images/j...
73% believe in God, 87% trust scientists at least "somewhat" so, at the very least, 60% of people believe on God AND trust science at the same time! That's assuming there is no overlap.
If you disparage someone for their religious beliefs, you are a bigot. Seriously, you really are. It's not some different thing, you can't cite the crusades as evidence of how evil modern Christians are, you can't point to wars in the middle east. None of that has anything to do with the little old lady down the street that goes to church. You're making an offensive, and more importantly, incorrect generalization about an entire group of people based on the actions of a very small minority that has nothing to do with them at all.
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.
I am a scientist and it does not threaten my faith.
The two are separate and I don't pit one against the other.
Both are tools to be used on a different scopes of work.
I keep the two isolated except at the very end of each day.
I wonder what the hell is going on and it's so elusive, I appeal to the gods for help.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I've been witness to numerous "negative miracles", where the divine hand of our Lord decides to inflict his wrath upon some unworthy subject. It often does result in a "God Damnit!", so your hypothesis seems reasonable.
Shouldnt the "God Damnit" precede the harmful act?
Also, once, I was chastized by a Christian for saying "God Damnit" when I don't believe in god. My excuse was that it was such a good "damn" curse. I don't believe in religion, but I do like their curse words.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I'm saying the older you get the more scary shit about this you likely remember.
At just over 40 you sure as hell don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you knew it happened and that everybody was talking like they'd be setting them off.
But anybody 40 or over lived through at least a period in which the likelihood of a nuclear war seemed like a very real possibility, and the older you get the more you remember.
And NOBODY ever differentiated between types of radiation while they were telling everybody how terrible it was going to be to die from it if we didn't get burned up in the initial blast.
So if you want to know why there's so much fear around radiation, it's because for several decades people lived in fear of dying from it, because people kept threatening to use the damned things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The only religious people I know of that have their beliefs disparaged are those who wish to impose those beliefs on others through the force of law.
You don't like gay marriage? Don't get gay married. Don't like abortions? Don't get one. Fully fund pre AND post natal care. Provide free contraception. Stop trying to force a reading from certain religious to start every government open meeting. Stop trying to keep people from buying alcohol on Sundays. The list goes on and on.
Its ok to hold beliefs those things above are bad or immoral. Don't get the government to enforce your morals on others.
I wonder if you removed the word religious from that sentence above if it still holds true? "If you disparage someone for their beliefs, you are a bigot." What makes religious beliefs so much different than any other kind of belief that it deserves this kind of protection? It seems that whenever anyone complains about the attacks on religious beliefs what they are really saying is that "If you disparage MY religious beliefs, you are a bigot." But if you want to give Mormons, or Christian Scientists, or Rastafarians a hard time, by all means.
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
That whole site is part of a gigantic, long-term cleanup - partially motivated by the desire not to let radioactive waste reach the Columbia River.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Wisdom, if you can handle it. Cognitive dissonance, if you can't.