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The Process That Should Not Be Broken
Plutonium and americium were mixed in with tributyl phosphate which was carried in an organic solvent that was used to separate the two radio-isotopes. The solution evaporated after being condensed into an acura solution. It is then fed back into a previous part of the process and split up as a solid to other parts of the compound. -
The Era of Plutonium
Plutonium was being experimented on to be made into the first nuclear weapons. The purpose of the Los Alamos laboratory was to recollect and purify the plutonium from those experiments. Cecil Kelley was one of these workers, having been there for over 11 years, working in these styles of plants. -
Stage Two: 4:10 pm - 5:40 pm
Cecil Kelley was incoherent between bouts of vomiting and hyperventilation. His skin was cold and was reddish violet in color, but had blue lips. The shaking chills were so severe that it necessitated restraint. His pulse and blood pressure: 160 per minute and 80/40. His body was emitting gamma rays while both his feces and vomit were radioactive. Because he had been irradiated with neutrons, the sodium and other light metals in his blood transformed into radioisotopes such as sodium-24. -
The Beginning of Stage Three 5:50 pm
At an hour and forty minutes, the third stage began. Kelley was coherent again, but continued to experience abdominal pain and still had bouts of vomiting. His first blood sample was drawn and showed he was exposed to 9 Gy from neutrons and 27 Gy from gamma rays. In comparison, 2 Gy can cause radiation sickness, 4 Gy is the median lethal dose, and 8 Gy will almost always cause death. He received more than seven times the lethal amount of radiation for an adult -
4 Pm, The Switch
Kelley turned the stirrer on at 4pm. The lower layer pushed up and out, creating a bowel where the upper layer filled in, increased in thickness and went critical. The event released a massive burst of neutrons and gamma radiation lasting 200 microseconds and created a blue flash of light. Cecil Kelley who was standing above the tank on a ladder looking in, hit the ground. Disoriented, he turned off and on the machine again, before running out of the room screaming, “I’m burning up.” -
The Day It All Went Wrong
An inventory took place which was intended evaluate the process but caused shortcuts. Dilute aqueous and organic solutions from two vessels were put into one. 200 liters of material including nitric acid wash, were put into the giant stainless steel tank that had 295 liters of aqueous organic emulsion. The acid caused the separation of the material into two distinct layers. The top layer was 160 liters with 3.27 kg Pu, while the bottom was 330 with about 60 g of Pu in it. -
Moments Before
A typical container is supposed to contain less than 0.1 grams of plutonium per liter. On the day in question, the giant tank had 2 grams of plutonium per liter with about 3.27 kilograms in the upper layer. The 3.27 kilograms of plutonium alone, is almost enough to create a self sustaining critical reaction. -
Stage One Moments After 4:00 pm - 4:10 pm
Two operators found him, and believing him to have been in a chemical spill, took him to a shower. 5-10 minutes later he was practically unconscious. It was remarked by one of the medical staff that he had, “Nice pink skin” which they later discovered was erythema, much like a sunburn. At 4:35 the building was evacuated. -
The End of Stage Three: 6 to 24 Hours After
Six hours later lymphocytes disappeared from his peripheral circulation.
Twenty four hours after the incident, a sternal bone marrow biopsy was performed (under false pretenses I should add.) The marrow was watery instead of bloody. It was almost entirely acellular, edematous, hemorrhagic fatty tissue. The end was near. -
Stage Four: 24-35 Hours After
During the evening of the second day, the pain in his abdomen became uncontrollable and severe. Medication continued to have less of an effect until his restlessness caused the disruption of his intravenous infusions. He began to sweat profusely, his color returned to that previous ashen color, and his pulse became increasingly erratic. At around 35 hours after the incident, Kelley died -
6 Am, New Years day, 1959
Dr. Clarence Lushbaugh did an autopsy on Cecil Kelley, and removed eight pounds of his organs, muscles, tissues, and bone, placed them in mayonnaise jars and never told the family. He was able to calculate that Cecil had a total Plutonium body burden of 18 nanocuries. 50% was in the liver, 36% in the skeleton, 10% in the lungs and 3% in the lymph nodes. A series of unethical acts were committed both after the accident and after Cecil's death. Look to The Plutonium Experiment, Nov 1993.