[ RadSafe ] How many curies were involved in Hiroshima

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Roy,

You mentioned in your post the SL-1 accident.. I was in highschool then, not really being to much interested in such news, but I do not remember that I ever heard or read anything about it until about the early eighties when we loaned at my Austrian ministry.films from the IAEA about nuclear explosions and also about the SL-1 accident. Since I had in the course of my work at that ministry   to deal with nuclear accidents I got a little deeper in the story, but I never ever read about any hints of sabotage. We unfortunately have now any number of suicide bombers, but at that time and at that accident I cannot believe that any fools (sorry, I cannot think of any other word) would have deliberately infiltrated the SL-1 crew, deliberrately drawn out the control rods by their bare hands to cause an explosion, which caused the death of three (!!!) persons - in present cynical speak a negligible "efficiency". 

Could you explain more about this "sabotage"? 

Best regards, 

Franz






---- ROY HERREN <royherren2005 at yahoo.com> schrieb:
> How about the SL-1 accident, see 
> http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm?   "3 January 1961: A reactor 
> explosion (attributed by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission source to sabotage) at 
> the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killed one navy 
> technician and two army technicians, and released radioactivity "largely 
> confined" (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to 
> the reactor building.  The three men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a 
> "routine" preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the 
> ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained 
> there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to 
> radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive 
> waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins."
> 
>  Roy Herren 
> 
>