10 معدلات الإصابة الشهيرة الموت من الإشعاع 10 Famous Incidences of Death by Radiation

I used to train people how to operate
nuclear power plants and my students were always interested in stories
about radiation sickness. Radiation poisoning or radiation sickness is a
form of damage to organ tissue caused by excessive exposure to ionizing
radiation. The term is generally used to refer to acute problems
caused by a large dosage of radiation in a short period of time, however
it can also refer to cases when somebody has been repeatedly exposed to
high doses. Symptoms prior to death can include severe nausea,
vomiting, and diarrhea, rapid hair loss, infections, edema, high fever,
and coma.
This list will look at 10 instances where people have died from
effects of radiation exposure and the circumstances surrounding their
deaths.
10Cecil Kelley




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On December 30, 1958 an accident occurred in the Los Alamos
plutonium-processing facility. Cecil Kelley, an experienced chemical
operator was working with a large mixing tank. The solution in tank was
supposed to be “lean”, typically less than 0.1 grams of plutonium per
liter. However, the concentration on that day was actually 200 times
higher. When Kelley switched on the stirrer, the liquid in the tank
formed a vortex and the plutonium containing layer went critical
releasing a huge burst of neutrons and gamma radiation in a pulse that
lasted a mere 200 microseconds.
Kelley, who had been standing on a foot ladder peering into the tank
through a viewing window, fell or was knocked to the floor. Two other
operators on duty saw a bright flash and heard a dull thud. Quickly,
they rushed to help and found Kelley incoherent and saying only, “I’m
burning up! I’m burning up!”. He was rushed to the hospital,
semiconscious, retching, vomiting, and hyperventilating. At the
hospital, Kelly’s bodily excretions were sufficiently radioactive to
give a positive reading on a detector.
Two hours after the accident, Kelley’s condition improved as he
regained coherence. However, it was soon clear that Kelley would not
survive long. Tests showed his bone marrow was destroyed, and the pain
in his abdomen became difficult to control despite medication. Kelley
died 35 hours after the accident.
9Harry K. Daghnian, Jr.




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Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. was an Armenian-American physicist with the
Manhattan Project. On August 21, 1945 he was conducting an experiment
attempting to build a neutron reflector by manually stacking a series of
tungsten carbide bricks around a plutonium core. As he was moving the
final block over the assembly, neutron counters alerted Daghlian to the
fact that the addition of this brick would render the system
supercritical. As he withdrew his hand, he accidentally dropped the
brick onto the center of the assembly. The addition of this last brick
caused the reaction to go immediately supercritical.
Daghlian panicked immediately after dropping the brick and attempted
to knock off the brick without success. He was forced to partially
disassemble the tungsten carbide pile to halt the reaction causing him
to receive a lethal dose of neutron radiation. He died 25 days later.
Daghlian was violating safety regulations by working on the assembly
late at night and alone in the laboratory.
8Louis Slotin




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Louis Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in
the Manhattan Project that created the first atomic bombs. He
participated in criticality testing of plutonium cores, often referred
to as “tickling the dragon’s tail”.
On May 21, 1946 Slotin and seven other colleagues performed an
experiment that involved the creation of one of the first steps of a
fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of beryllium around a
plutonium core. Slotin was stabilizing the upper beryllium sphere with
his left hand using the blade of a screwdriver to maintain the
separation between the two half-spheres in violation of experimental
protocol. At 3:20pm the screwdriver slipped causing the upper beryllium
sphere to fall creating a prompt critical reaction and a burst of
radiation. Scientists in the room observed a blue glow around the
spheres and felt a heat wave.
Slotin instinctively jerked his left hand upward, lifting the upper
beryllium hemisphere and dropping it to the floor, ending the reaction.
However, Slotin had already been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation,
equivalent to the amount that he would have received had he been 1500m
away from an atomic bomb detonation. He was rushed to the hospital
immediately, but the damage was irreversible and he died nine days later
on May 30, 1946. The core he dropped was the very same core dropped by
Daghnian the year before – causing it to be named the Demon Core.
Slotin’s story is integrated in the movie, “Fat Man and Little Boy”
starring Paul Newman and John Cusack.
7Eben McBurney Byers




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Eben McBurney Byers was a wealthy American socialite, athlete, and
industrialist. In 1927 while returning via chartered train from the
annual Harvard-Yale football game, Byers fell from his berth and injured
his arm. He complained of persistent pain and a doctor suggested that
he take Radithor, a patent medicine containing high concentrations of
radium. Byers drank nearly 1400 bottles over three years. By 1930,
when Byers stopped taking the remedy, he had accumulated significant
amounts of radium in his bones resulting in the loss of most of his jaw.
Byers’ brain was also abscessed and holes were forming in his skull.
He died from radium poisoning on March 31, 1932. He is buried in
Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a lead-lined coffin.
6Hiroshi Couchi




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Japan’s worst nuclear radiation accident took place at a uranium
reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, on September 30,
1999. The direct cause of the criticality accident was workers putting
uranyl nitrate solution containing about 16.6 kg of uranium, exceeding
the critical mass, into a precipitation tank. The tank was not designed
to dissolve this type of solution and was not configured to prevent
eventual criticality.
Three workers were exposed to lethal radiation doses. One of these
workers, Hiroshi Couchi, was transferred to the University of Tokyo
Hospital and three days after the accident he could talk and only his
right hand was a little swollen with redness. However, his condition
gradually weakened as the radioactivity broke down the chromosomes in
his cells.
The doctors were at a loss as to what to do. There were few
precedents and proven medical treatments for victims of radiation
poisoning. A local television crew followed the story for 83 days until
Hiroshi died. Their observations are chronicled in the book, “A Slow
Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness”




5Marie Curie




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Marie Sklodowska Curie was a physicist and chemist and a pioneer in
the field of radioactivity. In fact, it was Curie that coined the term
radioactivity, though Henri Becquerel discovered the phenomenon years
earlier. Curies research into the properties of two different uranium
ores, pitchblende and chalcolite. led to the discovery of radium and
polonium, other radioactive elements. Curie’s husband, Pierre, was so
intrigued by her research that he decided to suspend his own research to
join her.
The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating radium out of
pitchblende ore. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of
radium chloride was separated. Unfortunately, the Curies were unaware
of the deleterious health effects of repeated unprotected radiation
exposure. Pierre Curie died in 1906 after being hit and run over by a
horse drawn carriage, however Marie lived for another 28 years
continuing her research and eventually winning two Nobel prizes. She
often carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket
and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green
light that the substances gave off in the dark.
Marie Curie died on July 4, 1934 due to aplastic anemia contracted
from exposure to radiation. She is interred at the cemetery in Sceaux,
alongside her husband Pierre. Her laboratory is preserved at the Musee
Curie. Due to their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890′s
are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly
radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to
consult them must wear protective clothing.
4Alexander Litvinenko




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Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB officer who escaped prosecution
in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom . In
November of 2006 he suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died
three weeks later and post-mortem tests showed he had been given a
lethal dose of Polonium-210 via a cup of tea. On his deathbed,
Litvinenko accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of being behind his
death.
Subsequent investigations by British authorities into the
circumstances of Litvinenko’s death led to serious diplomatic
difficulties between the British and Russian governments. Unofficially,
British authorities asserted that “we are 100% sure who administered the
poison, where and how”. However they did not disclose their evidence in
the interest of a future trial. The main suspect in the case, a former
officer of the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO) Andrei Lugovoy,
remains in Russia. As a member of the Duma, he now enjoys immunity from
prosecution.
3Soviet Submarine K-19




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K-19 was one of the first two Soviet submarines equipped with
nuclear ballistic missiles. Several people had died during its
construction earning it the nickname “Hiroshima” among naval sailors and
officers. On July 4, 1961 under the command of Captain Nikolai
Vladimirovich Zateyev, K-19 developed a major leak in her reactor
coolant system causing the reactor temperature to rise to a very
dangerous 800 deg. Celsius. Due to poor design and failure to have a
backup cooling system installed, Captain Zateyev had no choice but to
order a team of seven engineering officers in crew to undertake a repair
despite the lethal rates of radiation exposure.
The repair crew was successful in stopping the leak however all seven
were dead within a week. The incident contaminated the entire boat and
within a few years twenty more
crewmembers were dead attributed to the incident at sea.
The Soviet Navy made extensive repairs to boat and it later returned
to service. It did, however, continue to experience horrible accidents
including an at-sea collision in 1969 and a fire in 1972 killing 28
sailors. It was finally decommissioned in 1991.
The movie “K-19: The Widowmaker” starring Harrison Ford and Liam
Neeson is loosely based on the nuclear accident on the K-19.
2Chernobyl




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On April 26, 1986 a nuclear accident occurred on the Number 4 reactor
at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. Workers at the plant
were planning a test to determine how long turbines would spin and
supply power to the main circulating pumps following a loss of main
electrical power. Due to another regional power station going offline,
the test was delayed and as a result, the test was conducted over the
night shift where the workers had not been trained on the test
procedure. Several subsequent errors, including a decision to disable
automatic shutdown mechanisms, led to an unstable reactor configuration
with nearly all of the control rods removed.
The reactor SCRAMed (rapid insertion of all control rods) but a flaw
in the design of the control rods actually caused the reaction rate in
the lower half of the core to increase. At this point, a massive power
spike occurred and the core overheated. The precise subsequent course
of events was not registered by instruments; it is known only as a
result of a mathematical simulation. What is known is that there was a
large steam buildup in the core that eventually exploded releasing tons
of radioactive steam and fission products into the air. Radiation
levels in the vicinity of the reactor core after the explosion were
30,000 times the lethal limit.
One person was killed immediately and his body was never found.
Another died that same day as a result of injuries received during the
explosion. Acute radiation sickness was originally diagnosed in 237
people on-site and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed
in 134 cases. Of these 28 people died within weeks of the accident,
six of whom were firefighters tasked with attending the fires on the
roof of the turbine building. Nineteen more subsequently died between
1987 and 2004. Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects,
although a large proportion of childhood thyroid cancers diagnosed since
the accident is likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine
fallout. Subsequent studies in the Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus
estimate over 1 million people were affected by radiation from
Chernobyl, however the extent of its effects may never be truly known.
1Hiroshima and Nagasaki




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The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan at the end
of World War II have been the only time in history such weapons have
been used on people. The justification for the bombings has been hotly
debated since, but no doubt the memory of their destruction has been a
large reason why they have been not used since.
On August 6, 1945 the uranium bomb, “Little Boy”, was dropped on
Hiroshima killing 70,000-80,000 people immediately. Three days later,
the plutonium bomb, “Fat Man”, was dropped on Nagasaki killing an
estimated 40,000-75,000 instantly. Those that survived the initial
blasts were then subject to severe radiation and thermal burns,
radiation sickness and related diseases all aggravated by the lack of
meckal resources. It is estimated that another 200,000 people had died
by 1950 as a result of health effects of the bombings.
Surviving victims of the bombings are known as hibakusha, a Japanese
word that literally translates to “explosion-affected people.” As of
March 31, 2009 235,569 hibakusha were recognized by the Japanese
government. The government of Japan recognizes about 1% of these as
having illnesses caused by radiation.