‘Atomic Man’ room set for cleanup

Workers are preparing to enter one of the more dangerous rooms on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation – the site of a 1976 blast that exposed a technician, later nicknamed the “Atomic Man,” to a massive dose of radiation.

Harold McCluskey, then 64, was working in the room when he was exposed to radiation by an explosion caused by a chemical reaction in a glove box, a sealed compartment through which workers used rubber gloves to handle radioactive material.

He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded – 500 times the occupational standard.

Hanford made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room was used to recover radioactive americium, a byproduct of plutonium.

Covered with blood, McCluskey was dragged from the room and put into an ambulance headed for the decontamination center. He was transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank.

During the next five months, doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin.

Nurses scrubbed him down three times a day and shaved every inch of his body every day. The radioactive bathwater and thousands of towels became nuclear waste.

McCluskey also received about 600 shots of zinc DTPA, an experimental drug that helped him excrete the radioactive material.

He was placed in isolation in a decontamination facility for five months. Within a year, his body’s radiation count had fallen by about 80 percent and he was allowed to return home.

But his radiation-related medical problems proliferated. He had a kidney infection, four heart attacks in as many months and cataract surgery on both eyes, followed by a cornea transplant and a precipitous drop in his blood platelet count, which required transfusions.

Friends at first avoided him until his minister told people it was safe to be around him. The accident sapped his stamina, and he was unable to hunt, fish or do any of the things he had planned for his retirement. He was studied extensively by doctors for the rest of his life and died of coronary artery disease in 1987 at the age of 75.

Hanford contains the nation’s greatest collection of nuclear waste and for more than two decades has been engaged in the dangerous work of cleaning up that waste. The space now dubbed the McCluskey Room is located inside the closed Plutonium Finishing Plant and is scheduled for cleanup this summer.

“It’s been largely closed up since the accident,” Geoff Tyree, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Richland, said Wednesday. “It was restricted for the potential for airborne radiation contamination.”

Since 2008, the Department of Energy and contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. have been preparing the plant for demolition.

“About two-thirds of the Plutonium Finishing Plant is deactivated – cleaned out and ready for demolition,” said Jon Peschong, an assistant DOE manager in Richland. “Cleaning out the McCluskey Room will be a major step forward.”

When specially trained and equipped workers enter the room this summer, they will encounter airborne radioactivity, surface contamination, confined spaces and poor ventilation, the DOE said.

They will be wearing abrasion-resistant suits that protect them from surface contamination and chemicals.

A dual-purpose air system will provide cool air for breathing and cool air throughout the suit for worker comfort, allowing them to work for longer periods of time. The suits are pressurized to prevent workers from coming into contact with airborne contaminants.

The McCluskey Room “is going to be the toughest work ahead of us as we finish cleaning the plant and getting it ready for demolition by the end of September 2016,” Tyree said.