CN: The image at the bottom is pretty graphic.
When someone has a terminal illness, there isn’t any one right answer, but there’s a range of life prolonging gadgets and drugs we generally agree are acceptable to shove into our orifices, should someone choose to pursue them.
There being no ‘right’ answer is why, despite his last words being a desperate plea for relief, Hisashi Ouchi was only allowed to succumb to his body ripping itself apart after another two and a half months of unimaginable torment.
Today’s Moment of Science… The Tokaimura Nuclear Disaster.
There are a few ways that exposure to a nuclear accident can kill you. The first way is slower and decidedly less sticky. Small amounts of exposure over a long time, damaging your DNA, can lead to leukemia or thyroid cancer. The second, messier way? Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS), and it’s the type of radiation syndrome you associate with the firefighters in Chernobyl (if you haven’t watched the series yet, spoiler: lying about a nuclear disaster is bad). ARS can cause death in a matter of hours or months. Most of the time, patients that languish for months between exposure and death have a lower exposure level.
Most of the time.
At the Tokaimura Nuclear plant, three technicians were working with a uranium solution in an open tank. In a boneheaded move that will forever make you remember the adage ‘measure twice, cut once,’ they poured an excess of uranium into the tank, causing what was once a plain metal tank to turn into a nuclear reactor. Because it’s not like nuclear physics is an exact science. This caused the newly minted nuclear reactor to do what a nuclear reactor does: react like fuck. An explosion of gamma radiation in a blast of blue light hit two of the men directly, the third receiving an indirect and much smaller dose. Ouchi received the worst of it.
He received 17 sieverts of radiation, which google assures me is unpleasant. 8 sieverts is typically a lethal dose. This is one of the highest measured doses of radiation someone’s received. Nevermind a chest x-ray, Ouchi had the radiation equivalent to having a nuclear bomb dropped on you.
Some of the last words he communicated were “I am not a guinea pig.”
When he first got to the hospital, other than his initial burns he looked fine. But he had a white blood cell count of zero. Under a microscope, his chromosomes were obliterated. Unable to reproduce new healthy cells and having a destroyed immune system, he was a dead man walking, living on the borrowed time of his remaining healthy cells.
As the effects of radiation started kicking in, he disintegrated. Skin grafts didn’t take hold. Between the lack of skin and veins and organs leaking like an old house, it was constant work to keep his blood and fluid levels stable. Changing his bandages took three hours, and they were weighed to approximate fluid loss. Two months into treatment, his heart stopped three times in one day. After that, multiple organ systems failed.
It’s unclear if or when he ever lost enough brain function to stop feeling the immense pain of all this.
Hisashi Ouchi died 83 days after the nuclear accident. Though conspiracy theories are almost understandable, the answer is maddeningly bureaucratic. Because of how Japan’s euthanasia laws are written, doctors were obligated to try to keep him alive without a do not resuscitate order (DNR). His family was not only aware of this, but visited the hospital frequently, and requested that every viable treatment be used. They were finally prompted to sign a DNR after 81 days. Even then, they were hesitant.
The question this ultimately raises: who’s responsible? The company operating below safety standards with their in-house ‘shadow guide’ for mixing nuclear fuel, because fuck it, it’s just nuclear physics? Ouchi for having his personal shadow guide to the shadow guide for mixing nuclear fuel, because fuck it, company culture, amirite? The euthanasia laws? The medical staff for not being more direct with his parents, or do the parents share some portion of the blame too?
Not one single person did it. But when there’s no right answer, someone will inevitably make a wrong one. And somewhere in there, didn’t they all torment Hisashi Ouchi for 83 days?
This has been your daily Moment of Science, and a reminder that we’re in a pandemic and you should have a chat with your medical proxy.
Wasn’t quite a nuclear reactor, it was a fuel separation facility and his team, to save time, used an unapproved container.
Only got around 28 – 30 pounds of uranium into it, with around 25 pounds being supercritical mass and it did become a nuclear reactor with no controls.
One coin was used to estimate his dosage – and it was across the street.
Cecil Kelly didn’t have as protracted a demise, but it was just as ugly. Chemical mixer, too much fissile mass, vortex formed and he was looking through the observation port, getting a full body dose.
When a neutron and atomic nucleus really, really love each other and that nucleus is fissile and fertile, don’t stick around while they consummate their union.
The blue glow was nicknamed “Kelly’s glow”, properly named Cherenkov radiation. See it around you and well, your holiday plans will most assuredly be in the shitter.
Have you seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GEPsSVpZY&list=LL6c2iWBZ6b3Mu4rJfjNh8dg&index=16
17! Sieverts!!!
Ho. Lee. Fuck!!!
I got put on desk duty for a month after a 115 mrem (it was a different time, we didn’t need no stinking SI units.) Of course, I didn’t actually receive that dose, it as 140F+ in the reactor compartment, and I just set my TLD next to a known hotspot for a while because I knew it would get me out of that duty.
Checking that my DNR is up to date.
Can anybody verify that the last two photos are legit? I have the book and the first two are from the book however the other two aren’t