Wood River criticality accident, 1964 - Rhode Island
Date: 24 July 1964
Location: Wood River, Rhode Island, USA
Type of event: criticality accident with uranium
solution
(The Only known death from nuclear accident in the United
States)
Description of the Nuclear Accident in Rhode Island:
The
accident occurred at a facility which reprocessed for recovery
highly enriched uranium in scrap material from fuel element
production. A tank containing uranium (93% U-235) in sodium
carbonate solution was being agitated by a stirrer. A worker,
intending to add a bottle of trichloroethane to remove organics,
erroneously added a bottle of uranium solution to the tank,
producing a criticality excursion accompanied by a flash of light
and the splashing of about 20% of the tank's contents (about 10
liters out of 40-50 liters, including the bottle contents) out of
the tank. The worker fled to the site's emergency building. Two
plant administrators returned to the building; one turned off the
agitator, producing a lesser criticality excursion that was not
recognized until their dosimeters were examined. The
administrators incurred doses of 100 rads and 60 rads. The worker
absorbed about 10,000 rads and died 49 hours after the accident.
Wood River Junction, Rhode Island is a small village located in the town of Richmond. It is home to the Chariho school district's main campus, and is otherwise largely comprised of turf farms. The village is the former location of a rail station for the New Haven Railroad's Shore Line, and was the site of a tragic rail accident in 1873.[1] Amtrak trains still pass along the tracks here today.
Wood River Junction is commonly considered by locals to be one of the coldest locations in the state of Rhode Island, due to its low lying and flat geography. It is surrounded by two rivers: The Wood River and Pawcatuck River.
Consequences: 1 fatality (10,000 rem), 1 injury. - happened
in Rhode Island!!
On 23 July 1964 – Wood River Junction facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island. A criticality accident occurred at the plant, designed to recover uranium from scrap material left over from fuel element production. An operator accidentally added a concentrated uranium solution to an agitated tank containing sodium carbonate, resulting in a critical nuclear reaction. This criticality exposed the operator to a fatal radiation dose of 10,000 rad (100 Gy). Ninety minutes later a second excursion happened, exposing two cleanup crews to doses of up to 100 rad (1 Gy) without ill effect.
Radiation poisoning:
Radiation poisoning, also called "radiation sickness", is a form of damage to organic tissue due to 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. Many of the symptoms of radiation poisoning occur as ionizing radiation interferes with cell division. This interference causes particular problems for otherwise normally rapidly dividing cells, such as those lining the gastrointestinal tract.
The rad is a unit of absorbed radiation dose in terms of the energy actually deposited in the tissue. The rad is defined as an absorbed dose of 0.01 joules of energy per kilogram of tissue. The more recent SI unit is the gray, which is defined as 1 joule of deposited energy per kilogram of tissue. To assess the risk of radiation, the absorbed dose is multiplied by the relative biological effectiveness of the radiation to get the biological dose equivalent in rems or sieverts (Sv). The sievert is equal to 100 rems.
The biologically effective dose in rems is the radiation dose in rads multiplied by a "quality factor", which is an assessment of the effectiveness of that particular type and energy of radiation. For alpha particles the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) may be as high as 20, so that one rad is equivalent to 20 rems, same goes for neutron radiation. However, for beta particles, x-rays, and gamma rays, the RBE is taken as one so that the rad and rem are equivalent for those radiation sources.
Further reading
Michihiko Hachiya , Hiroshima Diary (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1955), ISBN 0807845477.
John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Vintage, 1946, 1985 new chapter), ISBN 0679721037.
Ibuse Masuji, Black Rain (1969) ISBN 087011364X
Ernest J. Sternglass , Secret Fallout: low-level radiation from Hiroshima to Three-Mile Island (1981) ISBN 0070612420 (online)
Norman Solomon , Harvey Wasserman Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation, 1945-1982, New York: Dell, 1982. ISBN 038528537X, ISBN 0385285361, ISBN 0440045673 (online)
Reference:
-
McLaughlin, Thomas P., Shean P. Monahan,
Norman L. Pruvost, Vladimir V. Frolov, Boris G. Ryazanov, and
Victor I. Sviridov, May 2000, A Review of Criticality
Accidents, 2000 Revision, Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Los Alamos, NM), on line at CSRIC [http://www.csirc.net/docs/reports/la-13638.pdf].
Snug Harbor Rhode Island
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