It is 1999, and Japanese nuclear scientists
Hisashi Ouchi, Masato Shinohara, and Yutaka
Yokokawa are conducting routine work.
Within seconds two of those men would be doomed
to die, and Hisashi Ouchi would receive the
greatest dose of radiation any human being
has ever experienced.
The men are mixing together a batch of fuel
to be used in a fast breeder reactor, a special
type of nuclear reactor which can create more
fissile material than it consumes.
These reactors are typically used to aid in
nuclear research, as they can very quickly
and efficiently create large quantities of
nuclear material to fuel conventional reactors.
The men are experienced nuclear scientists,
but a series of miscalculations and outright
mistakes would doom two of them to die the
most horrible deaths one could imagine.
Ouchi is standing next to a large metal tank,
to which he is adding a mixture of various
chemicals and 16 kilograms of uranium.
Behind and above him, Shinohara stands on
a platform, overlooking the work, while four
meters away Yokokawa sits at a desk busying
himself with paperwork.
As Ouchi begins to pour the mixture into the
precipitation tank, he doesn't realize that
the tank has a maximum uranium limit of 2.4
kilograms.
Ouchi dumps the entire mixture into the tank
regardless, and as he does he sets in motion
one of the worst civilian nuclear accidents
in history.
The walls of the tank reflect neutrons being
released by the uranium atoms, which causes
the wayward neutrons to bounce back and strike
other uranium atmos and split them, releasing
even more neutrons.
Under a normal uranium limit, not enough uranium
atoms are present to sustain a nuclear chain
reaction, but Ouchi has just unknowingly dumped
so much uranium into the tanks, that within
nanoseconds the precipitation tank becomes
a fully working nuclear reactor.
Almost as soon as Ouchi has finished pouring
the fuel mixture there is a blinding flash
of blue light caused by the emission of Cherenkov
radiation.
The men stagger backwards, blinded and dazed
as the gamma-radiation alarms begin blaring.
Ouchi is blasted with an incredible seventeen
sieverts of radiation, or a whopping 300 times
the annual dose allowed for nuclear plant
engineers, and more than twice what is believed
to be a lethal dose.
Ouchi has just been bombarded with as much
radiation as if he had been standing at the
center of an atomic explosion.
Masato is further away, but he still receives
an incredible 10 seiverts of radiation, guaranteeing
his death.
Yutuka who is four meters away however only
receives a 3 seivert dose, five below the
lethal limit.
Ouchi though will suffer a fate no human being
in history has ever experienced.
As the radiation tears through his body, it
completely destroys all of his chromosomes,
making him the only human being to ever live
with no DNA in his body.
The radiation also almost completely destroys
all of his white blood cells, and covers most
of his body in third degree burns.
The radiation is so intense that it even burns
the skin on the side of his body facing away
from the tank.
Ouchi is so disoriented by the radioactive
blast that he immediately vomits into the
precipitation tank, and then manages to stagger
backwards.
Helping each other, the three men barely manage
to stumble into the decontamination chamber,
where Ouchi immediately passes out.
The men are rushed to the local hospital,
and treatment begins to try and save their
lives.
Ouchi is in critical condition, and is flown
to a better equipped hospital in the Chiba
prefecture.
By the time he gets there, his skin has almost
completely fallen off his body, and with no
skin any fluids he receives quickly leaks
out from his pores.
Just to keep him hydrated, Ouchi has to be
given fluids by IV twenty four seven, with
the majority of those fluids simply leaking
out of his body and soaking the bed.
The doctors treating Ouchi know that he will
not survive, no living being could possibly
survive the radiation dose he just suffered.
They make a controversial decision though,
and decide that whether Ouchi likes it or
not, he is now going to serve as a guinea
pig for treating radiation illness.
This is after all a once-in-a-lifetime medical
opportunity.
To try and restore his white blood cells,
he is given a transplant from his sister who
is a willing donor.
At first this seems to work, and Ouchi's white
blood cell count starts to recover.
However his body is so poisoned by radiation,
that his own flesh destroys the new white
blood cells.
Completely helpless to infection, Ouchi is
quarantined and sealed off from the world
in a special suite.
During this time, Ouchi fades in and out of
consciousness.
Five days after the accident he comes to.
His wife is able to see him briefly, and blood
is leaking from his eyes.
He begs the doctors to let him die, he doesn't
want to live in pain anymore.
He tells them that he is not a guinea pig.
The doctors respond by putting him into a
medical coma.
Their experiments are not over, and the doctors
pump blood into Ouchi just as fast as he is
losing it.
He receives as much as two dozen transfusions
a day, and desperate for results, the medical
team treating him begin to use drugs imported
from all around the world, but his body is
so damaged by radiation, they have no effect.
Twenty seven days after the accident, Ouchi's
body begins to disintegrate from the inside
out.
He has been unable to regrow new skin, and
in a bid to keep him from losing liquids through
his body's pores, he's been wrapped in linen
bandages.
Daily skin transplants are being done yet
the transplants simply won't take, and slough
off.
The muscles of his body start to peel off
his bones.
Inside his body, his organs begin to simply
come apart, as Ouchi liquefies from the inside
out.
At this point, Ouchi is nothing more than
a skeleton with a few inches of flesh attached
to it.
His body has decomposed so much that his right
foot has simply fallen off right below the
knee joint.
59 days into the ordeal, Ouchi's heart stops,
and yet the doctors resuscitate him three
times over the course of 49 minutes.
This severely damages his brain, which is
likely a mercy.
Ouchi is likely too brain damaged to regain
consciousness again.
Finally, on December 21st, 1999, Ouchi dies
or organ failure, his body simply unable to
continue the basic processes of life despite
being put on life support.
Shinohara would last four months more than
Ouchi, and was even thought to be recovering.
On New Years Day he was able to visit the
hospital gardens with the assistance of a
wheelchair.
However, the radiation had damaged him too
severely, and slowly his own body began the
process of shutting down.
In February he contracted pneumonia, and because
of the damage done to his lungs by the radiation,
he was unable to breathe on his own.
The doctors hooked him up to a ventilator,
taking away his ability to speak.
Shinohara was forced to resort to writing
messages on a pad of paper to his nurses and
family, but as time went on he grew weaker
and weaker.
Finally on April 27th, Shinohara too died
of multiple organ failure, the radiation claiming
him as well.
One of his last messages, scrawled on the
hospital notepad, was simply, “Mommy, please”.
Yokokawa would go on to make a recovery, and
six months after the incident was released
to recover at home.
However a year later an official investigation
would charge him and five others with criminal
negligence in the incident.
Public anger would lead to major reforms of
the facility as it was revealed that the experimental
plant routinely cut corners and ignored safety
rules.
For Ouchi though, the man who suffered the
greatest radiation dose in history, those
changes would come far too late.
