The Body Snatchers of Los Alamos (Nuclear criticality accident)

they did not tell the families the true purpose for the examinations what did they tell them that they had been given some radioisotope or some chemical and they wanted to see what it had done in the bodies of their loved ones but they did not use the word plutonium at 6 am on new year's day 1959 dr clarence lushbaugh began an autopsy more than just dissecting a body what he was about to do would kick off a series of semi-secret experiments draw comparisons in the media to the sci-fi trope of body snatchers and result in a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit 37 years later dr lushbaugh was about to open up one cecil kelly and remove eight pounds of his organs muscles tissues and bone he put these tissues including kelly's brain and a few hastily gathered mayonnaise jars and took them back to his lab for analysis this is the true story of the body snatchers of los alamos when you work with plutonium things can get dirty and workers at the facilities of the los alamos national laboratory the birthplace of the atomic bomb were getting dirty in the radioactive sense of the word while some of the smartest scientists to ever live were studying their recently discovered element and attempting to shape it into the heart of the first nuclear weapons facility staff were tasked with recovering the plutonium from these experiments at the los alamos plutonium processing facility workers chemically separated the element by dissolving and mixing unusable slag crucibles and other combined residues in large tanks this process would purify and concentrate plutonium for further experimentation it was in one of these very tanks where cecil kelly a 38 year old chemical operator at the facility would see the same bewildering blue flash that lewis slaughten and harry dogly and junior saw before the demon core claim their lives criticality is at the core of what nuclear weapons and nuclear power seek to control radioactive material naturally decays and when it does high-energy particles release themselves from the nuclei in random directions over time these particles can also hit other atoms in the same material like billiard balls cracking together to force more of these reactions to occur but small natural masses of radioactive material are almost always subcritical there aren't enough atoms around to act like a large nuclear pool table and constantly knock each other around if you change the mass and the shape of the material however the density of atoms can be such that it can make a mass go critical starting a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and when criticality is created on purpose in something like a nuclear bomb the resulting cascade of energy and radiation can be directed towards catastrophically destructive ends criticality by accident is sinister in another way within literally two ten thousands of a second you can be dead and not even know it yet in a vessel meant for dissolving plutonium naturally you never want too much plutonium in the chemical solution on the last work day before new year's break in 1958 however and for reasons that were later determined to be no single person's fault an unexpected amount of plutonium-rich solids were in the vessel cecil kelly was about to switch on the solution in kelly's vessel was supposed to contain maybe just a tenth of a gram of plutonium per liter the day before 1959 at los alamos however it actually contained over 200 times that amount the upper layer of organic solvents in the vessel accidentally washed in from two other vessels at the facility that should have been handled separately now contained over seven pounds of plutonium half the mass of the demon core and it was already close to going critical ironically at the same time cecil kelly showed up for work that day los alamos was reviewing safety protocols for the very vessel that was about to kill him based on experimental reconstructions of what happened next within one second of cecil kelly flipping the same switch he had flipped many many times before the stir in the vessel revved up to full speed this instantly flung out the lower aqueous layers of solution in the tank while simultaneously forming a vortex for the plutonium saturated upper layers to cascade down into this new configuration instantly created a critical situation in the tank and for the next two ten thousands of a second the plutonium atoms inside raged with a calculated 150 000 trillion unique fission reactions before the vessel had been mixed enough to return to subcritical cecil kelly though who is standing on a footstool in front of this vessel and looking in at it through a viewport received this nova of energy directly in his head and in his chest in the next moment kelly found himself on his back on the cold hard floor of the facility he was disoriented confused he turned off the mixer then turned it back on then ran out of the building two other operators on duty that day reported seeing a blue flash of light and then hearing a thud they turned off kelly's mixer again and followed him outside they found kelly twitching with uncoordinated muscles in the snowfall of new year's eve that blanketed los alamos all cecil could say was quote i'm burning up i'm burning up after finding him in the snow the two lab technicians that were with kelly took him to a chemical shower mistakenly assuming that he had been covered by some substance that they couldn't see but the burns appearing on kelly weren't from any chemical they were a dermatological reaction to the high-energy gamma rays that had just ripped through his body the technicians laid him on the floor and waited for an ambulance a laboratory nurse on staff observed that kelly was in shock unconscious and had quote a nice pink skin [Music] just a few minutes later cecil kelly was in the los alamos medical center and he was almost dead lips blew and eyes red like he had stared too long at the sun reports indicate that upon his arrival kelly was thrashing wildly enough to need physical restraint at the same time a number of los alamos scientists arrived and started taking samples kelly's urine was collected it was radioactive a chemist on hand don peterson used a tongue depressor in the room to collect kelly's vomit off of the floor and scrape his explosive diarrhea off of the walls those two were radioactive as was kelly's whole body the scientists took everything that they could as peterson recalled during a legal deposition in 1997 quote we weren't going to lose anything but the groans end quote one hour and 40 minutes after a mixture of plutonium accidentally bathed cecil kelly in gamma rays his condition was improving it wasn't much but it was something cecil was coherent again and able to keep down water though he complained of tremendous pain in his chest and abdomen he only occasionally vomited kelly was soon moved from the emergency room at los alamos medical center to a private room he told those watching over him about the heavenly blue glow that filled the room about the rumbling he heard inside of the vessel before he found himself twitching in the snow finally calmed down his blood was taken around this time and it was also radioactive the light metals in his blood like sodium had been activated or transformed by radiation into radioactive material themselves it was with his blood that the first whole body dose estimate during the accident was made for context the average dose that leads to a one hundred percent fatality rate is five graves a unit of absorbed radiation kelly had endured much more than five kelly was hit with an estimated 49 greys according to his wife doris kelly who was present in his room at this time cecil knew that he was dying and his doctors did too six hours after the accident all of the white blood cells in cecil's body were gone doris kelly and cecil's brother waited at his bedside for hours cecil spoke with them quietly asking doris to take care of their two children a seven-year-old daughter and an 18 month old baby boy he dozed off he slept he vomited nurses pumped him full of iv fluid the next day at 5 pm the doctors wanted to take a sample of bone marrow from cecil sternum to see if he might be a candidate for a bone marrow transplant a new and exciting operation in the 1950s the operation did not go well after operating equipment was wheeled to his bedside and his chest was cleaned with alcohol a surgeon made an incision in cecil's chest and removed quote a good deal of material end quote but the material didn't look like a bone marrow biopsy that was because the surgeon had missed cecil sternum entirely so the surgeon tried again and what he removed this time made doris's stomach churn she recalled later quote what they pulled out was slop they pushed a syringe in his chest and pulled it out it was it was just mush end quote cecil's bone marrow where red blood cells in the body are made was watery acellular transformed mush it wasn't bleeding like it should be obviously a bone marrow transplant then was not going to help cecil's chances but his doctors already knew that according to legal documents obtained by doris and her daughter katie during the discovery stage of the lawsuit that was to come decades later the attending los alamos doctors had no actual intention of trying to save cecil with a transplant one doctor thomas shipman wrote later quote because of the size of the dose it seemed obvious that he would die a central nervous system death so we never seriously considered bone marrow transfusions end quote this was the first of many half-truths that would be told by the doctors and scientists at los alamos as the manhattan project continued into the mid-1940s it was obvious to leading scientists that radioactive elements like plutonium were uniquely dangerous research materials they knew from the use of radionuclides in medical diagnostics for example that material left in the body could provide a long-term source of harmful radiation but what they did not know was how the body dealt with these metals how long would they remain in the body where would they be excreted in the urine or deposited in the bones from these questions spraying the impetus to begin the human plutonium injection experiments from 1945 to 1947 18 people were unknowingly injected with plutonium by manhattan project doctors during unrelated medical procedures none of these people knew that they were being injected with plutonium but the doctors knew exactly what they were looking for results indicated that plutonium in the bloodstream preferred to stay in the skeleton and for a long time the element also accumulated in the liver the kidneys and spleen animal models of the same experiments showed mostly the same thing but the results of these experiments came from plutonium injected into the bloodstream the exposure that workers at los alamos would encounter would be from inhalation of airborne particles and it was these workers that these experiments were ostensibly supposed to protect and so at best the known biokinetics of plutonium was indirect the most direct way to validate early models the best way to find out how plutonium entered and exited the body would be to get actual tissue samples from actual humans as a quick aside if you want to know more about the obviously controversial plutonium injection experiments i recommend the plutonium files by pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist eileen wilson where much of the information in this video is covered in detail and who will enter our story a bit later cecil kelly would only live another 10 hours after his bone marrow was sampled the pain in his chest became unmanageable even with medication and he again thrashed against the restraints of his hospital bed soon cecil was breathing in a way that doctors described as froglike breathing slowed to nothing after 15 minutes of this and cecil kelly was pronounced dead at 3 15 am on new year's day 1959 those who were in route to visit cecil were notified and told to return home one of those who were notified lewis hempelman was the man who oversaw the medical care of both harry doglion and louis slaughten the two physicists who also lost their lives after criticality accidents with the so-called demon core some 14 years before kelly had died exactly 34 hours and 45 minutes after a plutonium vortex and an improperly loaded vessel went critical but his job wasn't done scientists had cecil's body dragged by sled from the los alamos medical center through the snow back to the lab and into a steel-lined room his body was still exceedingly radioactive two hours and 45 minutes after cecil kelly died the resident pathologist at los alamos dr clarence lushbaugh began the autopsy that would both start a brand new program at los alamos and cost the medical center and the university of california millions of dollars doris kelly cecil's widow who worked with her husband at los alamos would eventually be compensated with sixteen and a half thousand dollars for the accident and given two hundred fifty dollars to plan a funeral ever the scientist clarence lushbaugh reportedly saw cecil's tragic death as an experiment of opportunity he had the unique chance here to perform an autopsy on a radioactive corpse and an opportunity to confirm or deny the results of the plutonium injection studies tissue samples from cecil would be direct and would therefore directly confirm the bloodstream models or not lush ball did not ask anyone for permission or notify the family before removing eight pounds of muscle bone soft tissue brain and spinal cord from the body he placed the samples in several wide mouth mayonnaise jars and transported them back to his lab the jars would eventually be sent to labs across the country for study to the satisfaction of the scientists when the results came in they did in fact differ from what they thought they knew about how plutonium moved around the human body for example there was much less deposition in kelly's skeleton and more in the liver and there was much much more plutonium in his lungs and lymph nodes and it stayed there for much longer than anticipated these data based on kelly's 11 and a half years of incidental plutonium exposure in the lab could be used to shape industry safety going forward wright langham a radio biologist at los alamos who created the protocols for the human injection experiments called the findings undoubtedly fortuitous they were so unexpected in fact it was decided to collect tissue samples from other facility staff like kelly and from the general public as a control the los alamos human tissue analysis program was born [Music] katy kelly moreau had been trying to find out what actually happened to her father since 1974. the u.s atomic energy commission had released a statement after the accident that quote the accident was directly attributable to the errors on the part of the deceased operator end quote the laboratory director at los alamos at the time norris bradbury disagreed saying no single cause was identifiable nonetheless cecil kelly had become something of a scapegoat it wasn't until 20 years later in 1994 that miss kelly would receive a stack of documents from los alamos detailing what actually happened to her father or rather what happened to eight pounds of him around the same time more details were coming out about the human tissue analysis program immediately after kelly's death it turned out clarence lushbaugh made it standard practice to take tissue samples from everyone he performed an autopsy on regardless of whether or not they worked at los alamos tissues from some 1520 people were sampled for plutonium in this way in operations performed all the way up until 1980 the lab would claim that all organ donations and samples were obtained with permission from next of kin it would later admit that quote people did not know the samples were being sent to los alamos in the spring of 1987 investigative journalist eileen wilson was working her way through some documents at kirkland air force base a few papers detailing experiments on radioactive animal carcasses had got her attention years of further investigation would eventually lead her to los alamos and in november of 1993 wilson would publish the first in a series of reports in the albuquerque tribune entitled the plutonium experiment outlining the fate of cecil kelly the tissue analysis program and the plutonium injection experiments wilsom would win a pulitzer prize for her series and los alamos scientists would immediately feel the pressure from it as the director of los alamos national laboratory siegfried s hecker said in 1995 quote our credibility and integrity were put in question by the widespread publicity regarding the plutonium injection experiments and other human radiation experiments end quote and that questioning came from the highest office in the land the advisory committee on human radiation experiments was established in 1994 by president bill clinton for an executive order the los alamos team working with the government's committee would end up releasing over 1600 documents to the public make no mistake without a loan journalist investigation a government committee and the cooperation from los alamos we might not know a thing about cecil kelly the tissue program or the injection of unknowing human patients with plutonium and katie kelly wouldn't have known that somewhere her father's brain was in a mayonnaise jar just two years later in 1996 katy kelly and other families who were affected by what the media had dubbed the body snatchers of los alamos initiated a class-action lawsuit against the los alamos medical center and the university of california five years later in 2001 the plaintiffs were awarded a 9.5 million dollar settlement and that was that however clarence lushbaugh the pathologist who cut open cecil kelly never settled he died in 2000 without once admitting that he had done a single thing wrong it was a feeling that many scientists and doctors at los alamos shared at least in part focusing more on the results than the optics of their experiments leshba did have something to say about his actions however why he did what he did before he died lashbaugh was asked during a legal deposition who had given him the permission to remove and distribute eight pounds of cecil kelly around the country he responded god gave me permission until next time thank you so much to the verde nerdy staff at the facility for the direct and substantial support and the creation of this here video today especially i want to recognize research assistant sf edwards and visiting scholar cody kilibrew kind of fitting if you want to join the facility drape on a silky white lab coat join me on discord see episodes early see members only live streams not like that you can go to patreon.com kyle hill right now and sign up for the facility today and hey if you support us just enough get your name on aria here each and every week and as you can see there's literally hundreds and hundreds of you so i have no idea how i'm going to pass the if you want to dive more into this topic if you want to know more about the human plutonium injection experiments and everything i do recommend eileen wilson's book the plutonium files i just ordered it myself it is a little hard to find but i think you will find quite elucidating illuminating and perhaps even radiant irradiating if you will thanks for watching

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 773,389

Rating: 4.9686441 out of 5

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, los alamos, manhattan project, plutonium, plutonium injection experiments, body snatchers, cecil kelley, accident, criticality accident, criticality experiment, criticality accident blue light, nuclear, nuclear disaster, nuclear history, demon core

Id: yOdRh5HP650

Length: 21min 20sec (1280 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/doctorgibberish]

I really like the direction Kyle is going in, just can someone tell me what the heck happened to saturation and color balance in the last bit of the video??! Looks like someone let an angry 3 year old play with the sliders