How macabre.. Whilst doing some research on forgotten nuclear accidents I came across this bizarre story : The first US major nuclear accident took place in one of 17 experimental reactors at the military nuclear testing ground at Idaho Falls On Jan 3 1961 three servicemen, John Byrnes, Richard McKinley and Richard Legg were on duty at Reactor no 1 a 3 megawatt prototype It had been shut down as work was needed to be done on instruments and the control rods were disconnected. Basically the process was simple, the central rod had to be lifted up 10 cm and then coupled to the remote driving mechanism Nobody really knows what went wrong, as nobody lived to tell the tale. Whatever it was it was over in 4 seconds. Later it was discovered that the control rod had been pulled right out of the core. The AEC suggested that the rod may have got stuck and that 2 of the men had tried to lever it up manually as they tugged at it it suddenly freed itself and shot up not 10 cm but nearly 50 cm With the withdrawal of the control rod the core immediately went supercritical overheating and boiling the fuel. There was an explosion of steam which blasted a solid slug of water right out through the pile cap. Legg and McKinley were killed outright, McKinley being impaled on the ceiling structure on a rod blown out of the control plug Byrnes was knocked down by the enormous flash of radiation The auto alarms tripped and emergency squads rushed to the scene but before they reached anywhere near the site of the accident their meters went right of the scale showing over 500 roentgens per hour- a lethal dose. the levels inside the reactor were even higher at 800 roentgens. However 2 heroic rescue members hauled out Byrnes, sadly too late. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital McKinleys impaled body was giving off 15000 roentgens an hour, the head, one arm and both legs had to be buried as high level nuclear waste in a special box. Only the trunk and one arm received normal burial and then it was wrapped in lead and put in a lead lined coffin The bodies of Legg and McKinley had to be dismembered because some parts were so intensely radioactive and remote handling gear had to be used for this gruesome task Pathologists working on the bodies had to do so in radiation suits and worked not with with surgical instruments but with ordinary tools at the end of long poles All the bodies were so radioactive that 20 days passed before it was considered safe to handle them for burial. In the case of Legg and McKinley the most radioactive portions were buried in lead lined canisters in lead lined vaults. What portions remained along with Byrnes were buried in lead lined coffins in the Arlington military cemetery. 14 other men, from the rescue teams, received doses of 5 roentgens or more In all 791 people were contaminated as was every vehicle, box or piece of equipment they touched. The ground around the plant as well as the highway outside were radioactive It took 18 months to clean up with men in protective suits working at 4 hours a time with only 8 mins allowed in the radioactive zone Think thats bad ? well I have a growing collection of forgotten accidents Mostly from the US due to the more open policy given to reporting ( though I am sure many more have gone unreported) as well as the USSR and the UK
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 22:05:25 +0000
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