Site of 1976 "Atomic Man" Accident To Be Cleaned 299
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.
David Hahn (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I would have thought 'the radioactive boy scout' [wikipedia.org] would have had the most exposure to americium (stockpiled from smoke detectors). His house needed a similar clean up after.
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Treatment sort of worked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anti-nuclear FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Re:Treatment sort of worked (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Faith in God (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Everybody skips the interesting bits (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]. His pastor had to convince people he was safe to be around.
Harold was far from the only Tri-Cities nuclear celebrity [exopermaculture.com]. 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.
Re:Faith in God (Score:2, Interesting)
Science doesn't try to turn homosexuals straight. Religion does.
I have yet to see a war declared where a faction says, "Science is on our side!" Religion most definitely does.
Science doesn't encourage people to be stupid and proud of it. Religion actively *discourages* critical thinking. There are plenty of studies out there showing strong correlations between religion and education levels. (Yes, I know there are plenty of examples of this to the contrary, but these people are few and far between)
Science doesn't convince people that they should deny their children life-saving therapies. There are tons of people who have allowed their children to die because things as simple as a blood transfusion is anathema.
What's the phrase? Bad people do bad things, but religion makes good people do bad things.
So yes, we *need* to be bigoted against religion. Religion has been the direct cause of so much damage and pain in this world that it *deserves* to be hated.
Re:Faith in God (Score:5, Interesting)
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?