European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 2, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                The radiation victims of Hanford by Linda Roach Monroe los Angelos times n that saturday in 1962 at Richland wash., the men whose bodies formed the radiological front lines of the cold War knew what it meant to see the eerie Blue Flash known As Cerenkov radiation. Quot he saw the Blue Flash twice and he knew that nobody had Ever lived after seeing the Blue Flash. So in his mind he knew he was dead. He told me that Quot says Dorothy Aardal of her husband Harold. A worker in a plutonium Plant in Southeastern Washington a Hanford nuclear reservation Harold Aardal was just a few feet away from a vat in which a nuclear Chain reaction had accidentally started. By the time Aardal was out of there the buttons on his coveralls the Gold fillings in his Teeth and even the blood in his body had become radioactive. But Aardal did t die then or later from radiation s known effects. Neither did the two other men who in a few dozen seconds received radiation doses that were several times what a person normally receives in an entire lifetime. Nor did Harold r. Mccluskey the Hanford worker who was known As Quot the atomic Man Quot after another Accident in 1976, embedded radioactive americium in his Skull. Like Aardal the atomic Man died of cardiovascular problems More than a decade after the Accident. Indeed even As the Federal government is opening up its records on numerous and often secret incidents of radiation exposure to workers and the Public from the nuclear weapons Industry these men s lives Bear witness to the difficulties in blaming radiation for health problems that appear Many years later. There Ere no definitive studies linking cardiovascular disease to acute radiation although there Are enough hints in animal studies to suggest a possible connection. No one can be sure because neither these general hints nor the specific problems of the men in the 1962 Accident have been pursued at Hanford. But the . Department of Energy s new openness about past radiation releases is raising such issues As never before. For example a federally financed research panel reported in july that Hanford a massive releases of radioactive iodine into the air from 1945-47 were Likely to have Given area children High radiation doses to their thyroid glands. Spewing invisibly from stacks above plutonium factories the radio iodine concentrated in the thyroids of people who drank milk that came from local cows. Children s doses Are estimated As High As 2,500 Rem to the thyroid More than 30,000 times greater than is considered acceptable today for a person to receive in a year. A separate study will look for health problems caused by the Radl Olodine. Already though the preliminary report has led to several lawsuits by people convinced that Hanford is to blame for health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. And the Prospect of additional disclosures about other radiation releases is Likely to result in even More litigation. Such is the context for that 1962 nuclear Accident at Hanford. Like a radioactive Marker the Story of the Accident Points to the uncertainty of life at and near the Plant where America made its nuclear weapons. Most of the details have never been published in the non scientific press. Newspaper reports at the time relied on the upbeat and very limited information provided by the atomic Energy commission which then ran Hanford. But a review of obscure scientific papers and talks with the Sun ivors and their relatives paint a portrait of an atomic Energy commission institution that created its own definitions of radiation safety under a protective shroud of cold War secrecy. As in the Case of the thyroid radiation answers Are lacking to Many questions because no one in the government asked them and did t invite anyone else to ask either. The Crew in the 234-5 building at Hanford so Plant knew enough to fear the Blue Flash on that saturday april 7, 1962. By both mistake and malfunction a valve allowed a plutonium solution to be sucked into an 18-gallon pyrex tank. With a loud Hiss at 10 59 a.m., the liquid reached a Quot critical mass Quot a the volume of material necessary for a nuclear Chain reaction to spontaneously begin. Inside a nuclear reactor intense radiation emitted by this Cascade of splitting or Fis Sioning atoms is confined by Lead shielding and thick Concrete. But because fission was not supposed to happen in the vats of a Piant there were no such barriers to protect Aardal and co workers Frank r. Lohdefinck and James r. Williamson. The Blue Flash was the optical equivalent of a sonic Boom. The Fis Sioning material launched High Energy particles at such Speed that it set up an optical rebound a Blue Light. Williamson is now 56 and looking Forward to retirement in four years from Hanford. He shared his memories of the Accident reluctantly. When a reporter approached he shut off the Lawn Mower in his Mother in Law s Back Yard and recalled a Day that Quot i d just As soon  Williamson was in the same room with Aardal and Lohdefinck but about 23 feet away. He said that he recalls hearing a Short loud Hiss like the sound of an arc welder and seeing two Quick Blue flashes that lit up the entire 30 by 40-foot room. A once Harold saw it he said let s get out of Here a Lohdefinck was saying Are you sure a and Harold said Yeahl Quot the weekend Skeleton Crew of 22 scrambled to get out of the 480-foot-Long building and As far away from the radiation As possible. Even 75 Yards away from the building though detectors showed that penetrating radiation Levels were increasing. Standing in that spot for an hour would subject a person to 200 Milliren of Gamma radiation per a of Csc hah red  Kew Lewk Al Terrt Moren in ids Chwe . Hour a Little More than half the radiation dose an american receives in a year from natural sources such As cosmic rays. The fission reaction continued for another 37 hours. Glen Thoennes a pipe fitter who was working behind a partial Wall about 40 feet from the Fis Sioning material says that when he saw the flashes and heard the alarms he thought a routine radioactive contamination incident had occurred. It was not unusual in Hanford a plutonium plants for a Large bag or a protective Glove to break with a radioactive substance coating someone a skin or occasionally entering a workers body through a Cut or inhalation. Now 73 and retired Thoennes was the fourth Man hospitalized because of the Accident although his radiation dose was later determined to be relatively Small about three times the annual dose from background radiation. The men were taken to a first Aid station away from the immediate Vicinity. Thoennes recalled radiation technicians arriving within an hour at the station and embarking on a Hunt for All Metal. Neutrons shooting from the fission reaction make metals radioactive. Quot we had coveralls then with Metal buttons. When they finally got a Crew out from town and they checked us those buttons were so hot they Cut them off and they took ail of our keys and rings and our watches and everything else that was Metal because they were ail really emitting some  his wife Bernadine also remembers an atomic Page 14 a a a the stars and stripes More than 40 years after the fact the department of Energy is acknowledging that radiation leaked from the Hanford nuclear reservation Between 1945 and 1947 at Levels that endangered die health of nearby residents. Photo shows the world s first plutonium production reactor at die reservation in Washington state. A Energy commission official who Quot told me not to say anything Quot to the press about the Accident. She hid out for Days with the wife of a Hanford safety official. The men had been taken to the first Aid station in private cars and a bus a which ironically was driven by Harold r. Mccluskey. Mccluskey had narrowly missed being directly involved in the criticality Accident Aardal had just taken Over to allow Mccluskey a break when the Accident happened. Fourteen years later though on aug. 30,1976, Mccluskey earned the Label Quot the atomic Man Quot when he was nearly blinded and made permanently radioactive by a chemical explosion in another plutonium processing Plant at Hanford. His Skul and upper body were peppered with americium-241, which remains significantly radioactive for 4,580 years. Mccluskey sued the government and received $275,000 for his injuries. Still until his death in 1987 he remained a Booster of the nuclear Industry using his evocative nickname. For Aardal Lohdefinck Williamson and Thoennes in 1962, their Accident was followed with a trip to a special radiation Accident unit at a Richland Hospital. But treatment Wasny to the Only objective so was research in one of the More chilling paradoxes of the nuclear Industry it is Only through such accidents that scientists get their Best information on what radiation does to the human body. Hanford doctors took blood samples hourly for Days and continued regular blood tests for More than a year after that. They used various counting techniques to try not a technician readies fuel rods for testing at Hanford nuclear reservation to confirm uranium plutonium Content of fuel pellets inside the sealed tubes. To figure out How much radiation the men had received. They tracked the radioactive decay in their bodies. They trimmed their fingernails close shaved off ail their radioactive body hair and considered pulling out their Gold filled Teeth. Quot they flew in doctors from All Over. They would take the blood and then they would freeze it and then they would have a plane waiting to Fly it wherever they took it a i can to remember where it was a mrs. Aardal said. It was t until three years later that Clear calculations of the menus total radiation doses appeared in the scientific literature. Herbert w. Parker the respected health physicist who was at Hanford from its beginning in the mid-1940s, listed them in a paper for the International atomic Energy Agency. Aardal received 109-123 Rem of Quot whole body Quot radiation Overall with 510-630 Rem to his eyes. For Lohdefinck the whole body dose was 41 -47 Rem and 138-168 Rem to the eyes. Williamson received 19 Rem of whole body and 43 Rem of retinal radiation. Radiation to the Testicles was about 245 Rem for Aardal and 110 Rem for Lohdefinck. Temporary radiation sickness symptoms such As vomiting occur in about 5 percent of the people exposed to 50 to 100 rems of whole body radiation. The threshold dose for cataracts caused by radiation is 60 rems. It was t until two weeks later mrs. Aardal remembers that doctors seemed confident of Aardal s survival however Aardal was seriously anaemic for a couple of years his wife remembers. And their fourth child a daughter born a month after the Accident was their last. The radiation had made him sterile. A couple of years later when Williamson met the woman who would be his wife he informed her he was afraid to have any children with her because of the Accident. Kathryn Williamson adds though that it was t much of an Issue for them because she already had children from a previous marriage. Aardal kept working in plutonium processing until retiring in 1987, but Quot his nerves were shot Quot mrs. Aardal says. Quot he kept a lot to himself. Maybe he did t want to worry  psychological help was not part of the medical follow up that Hanford offered the workers neither was there any follow up at Hanford aimed specifically at linking Long term physical health effects to the radiation exposures. There been no special Effort at tracking something As Subtle As incipient cataracts or atherosclerosis or at correlating them to radiation exposure said Jerry Yesberger a health physicist for the department of Energy. Mrs. Aardal Lohdefinck s son Richard and Williamson say that they detected no vision problems As result of the Accident. But Mccluskey did have cataracts As Well As atherosclerotic heart disease when he died at age 75 of coronary and respiratory failure three years ago. Lohdefinck and Aardal also died of cardiovascular problems Lohdefinck in 1988 at the age of 77 and Aardal one year earlier at age 65. Williamson and Thoennes say they have no evidence of unusual health  problems have never been definitively related to external radiation in japanese atom bomb survivors or elsewhere. On the other hand there Are hints of a possible connection in past research and there is recent evidence of molecular aspects of heart disease that might be affected by radiation. But separating any of radiations effects from those of diet and lifestyle would be just As difficult As the current task in Washington state of trying to find radiation effects in Hanford area children of the mid-1940s. Quot it just would be awfully hard because coronary heart disease is so common Quot said or. William Hollingsworth a member of the . Commission that studied radiation effects in japanese after world War ii. A people die mostly of heart cancer and strokes and that a the whole problem with studying radiation effects in any  tuesday 0c ber2,1990 the stars and stripes a a a Page 15