Have you heard of Hisashi Ouchi?.

Hisashi Ouchi was one of three employees of the Tokaimura nuclear plant to be heavily impacted by the accident on 30 September 1999. Leading up to the 30th of the month the staff at the Tokaimura nuclear plant were in charge of looking after the process of dissolving and mixing enriched uranium oxide with nitric acid to produce uranyl nitrate, a product which the bosses of the nuclear plant wanted to have ready by the 28th.

Due to the tight time constraints, the uranyl nitrate wasn’t prepared properly by the staff with many shortcuts being used to achieve the tight deadline. One of these shortcuts was to handle the highly radioactive produce by hand. During their handling of the radioactive produce while trying to convert it into nuclear fuel (uranyl nitrate is used as nuclear fuel) for transportation the inexperienced three-man crew handling the operation made a mistake.

Tokaimura nuclear plant

During the mixing process, a specific compound had to be added to the mixture, the inexperienced technicians added seven times the recommended amount of the compound to the mixture leading to an uncontrollable chain reaction being started in the solution.

As soon as the Gamma radiation alarms sounded the three technicians knew they made a mistake. All three were exposed to deadly levels of radiation, more specifically Ouchi receiving 17 Sv of radiation due to his proximity to the reaction, Shinohara 10 Sv and Yokokawa 3 Sv due to his placement at a desk several meters away from the accidents. When being exposed to radiation it is said that anything over 10 Sv is deadly, this would prove to be true in this instance.

During the accident, Ouchi was exposed to 17 sieverts of radiation with 8 sieverts being normally considered fatal and 50 millisieverts being the maximum limit of annual dose allowed for Japanese nuclear workers

Ouchi’s exposure to the radiation was so severe that his chromosomes were destroyed and his white blood cell count plummeted to near-zero. Most of his body had severe burns and his internal organs received severe damage.

It was cruel that he was resuscitated on the 59th day when his heart stopped three times within a period of 49 minutes, despite wishing not to be let to suffer.

After being treated for a week, Ouchi managed to say, “I can’t take it anymore… I am not a guinea pig”. However, the doctors kept treating him and taking measures to keep him alive, which only ensured a very slow and very painful death.

After 83 days of struggle, Ouchi died of multiple organ failure on December 21, 1999.

He was the only human being ever in history to be exposed to such an amount of radiation at a time.

It was considered equivalent to the hypocenter of the blast of Hiroshima Nagasaki.

So, yeah, let the superpowers attained by radiations stay in the movies, while we continue to wear a lead jacket while operating an orthopaedic case.

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