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Feb. 9, 2023 - ParaNaughtica
57:12
Walking Ghost

Hisashi Ouchie was a lab-technician at a nuclear plant in Japan, and he was in the process of producing nuclear fuel with two of his colleagues.....and, none of them had any training in the process which consisted of a very precise series of steps. Let's see how this turns out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Thank you.
Master Flash.
What's going on, man?
Hanging out.
Coffee? What are you drinking today?
You know, I'm drinking in life's mysteries, my friend, and life's justices.
Hey, bro, I wanted to ask you, have you heard about these Japanese whaling vending machines?
These Japanese whaling vending machines.
Have you heard about this shit?
You know, it's funny that you bring that up, because I was just on my way to one of those just now, actually.
Just for the novelty of it, if I could, I'd probably hit it up.
But yeah, I heard that they were now offering a selection of whale meat, even though it's controversial.
Yeah, different cuts of whale meat over there in Japan.
I wonder what the prime cut would be, you know?
Yeah, I don't know if it's like a rib piece or, you know, like a whale flank.
I'm not even familiar with it.
I'm not familiar with it.
Parts of a whale when it comes to butchering.
It's not my specialty.
It's a very controversial thing, but even with all the controversy of whaling and supplying whale, the vending machines are actually being really quietly successful.
I think they want to end up having at least 100 of these things all over Japan.
Right now, they have four of them.
At the moment, but they want to shoot for 100 all over Japan.
Yeah, what I've read is they hope to expand the vending machines to at least 100 or so locations across the country in the next five years.
And a lot of the protesting has sort of subsided.
I guess they used to have these really criticized research hunts in the Antarctic and whatnot.
And now they've...
Done away with those, but they've resumed commercial whaling off Japanese coasts.
So they're, yeah, I think they want to make a market boom with old whale meat.
I mean, what do they have?
They have sashimi, whale sashimi, like some bacon.
They have whale bacon.
Yeah, they have like just chunks.
I don't know what to, you might know a little more about it than I do, but yeah, they just have kind of chunks of whale and neatly wrapped in freezer bags.
Yeah, most of it's caught off the northeastern coast.
Is it freeze-dried?
Like, how does it stay fresh in these vending machines?
It looks like it's packed in, like, vacuum-sealed plastic bags.
And so you just spend the money and bloop, it just plops right out for you.
And it's all sealed fresh away.
I know, dude.
I mean, it's weird for us.
Over in Japan, that's pretty standard.
They have a lot of different types of vending machine stuff that...
They sell random things.
I know they sell used women's underwear.
Yep, used panties.
Everybody's heard that one.
Yeah, the myth, the legend.
Japanese vending machines.
How do they know they're used?
Do they have like, I don't know, like a harem of women where they just wear these panties all day or weeks at a time, whatever?
And then they're like, okay, time to change.
Here, give me those underwear now.
I'm going to put them in the vending machine.
Ooh, smell these ones.
These smell really good.
Not really too sure what the quality assurance, you know, check is.
And what is the point of having used women underwear?
Now, do men buy these to smell them?
To wear them?
I mean, what is the point?
You know, I think the point is you can do whatever the hell you want with them.
Freedom. I like it.
People, all the above, I would say.
People probably do all the above, my friend.
Probably right next to the whale meat.
Yeah, get you whale meat and get you used panties.
I don't know, I'd probably try it.
The whale meat or the panties?
Yeah, I'm sorry, let me just, the whale meat.
I don't need any used panties, man.
Just some whale bacon.
You know what's crazy?
Whales are so big.
You know, so like, the supply to these vending machines, I mean, you know, it's gonna take a while for it to run out.
Just the vacuum sealing operation.
Yeah. Alone would just take a massive effort.
You know, what needs to get done gets done.
Like, you know, the street sweepers?
What if that's Japan or is that like China?
Where they just have people walking around with brooms and sweeping the streets?
That's a good question.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I don't know too much about that.
I know it ain't here.
I can tell you that.
No, definitely not.
It's not happening around these parts.
Yeah, I don't think anywhere in the United States has any sort of...
Well, before we get started, Coop, I know last week we mentioned an interesting article.
We were talking about the family of that Ugandan woman who was decapitated by that gate in the National Park.
It was an ongoing case at Utah's Arches.
The family sued for $250 million.
And of course, the state attorney was trying to shoot it down.
Only give him 20 grand.
Yeah, and that woman, of course, was Esther Nakahigo.
And her husband, or yeah, her husband, Ludovic, in a car in Arches National Park.
She was decapitated by a gate, essentially.
We covered that story last week, so you guys should go check that out.
But they were awarded $10.5 million?
Or is it $10 million?
I believe the husband was awarded the $10 million.
And the mother of the family was awarded $700,000 or like $750,000.
And then the father was awarded like $200,000 or something like that.
So all told, you know, like over $10 million.
But I'm just glad that there's a little bit of...
I mean, it's such a freak thing.
You know, obviously it wasn't the intent of Utah's Arches to cause anything.
But just the circumstances were so tragic that I'm glad to see that at least, you know...
At least that family has the money to carry on.
And I can say that is a far cry from what Amanda Burnt wanted to give them.
$22,000.
$22,000.
For funeral expenses and ludicrous therapy for having his wife decapitated right next to him.
Yeah. You can't even pay your bills on $22,000 for a year.
A year's worth of bills.
No. But you know what you can buy?
You can buy $2,857 of the cheapest items in that whale meat vending machine or $956.5 of the more expensive, more cuisine of the whale meat vending machine products.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So I'm glad.
I was happy to hear that.
I just want a little update for the listeners on that.
Go check it out.
Go read the story.
A little bit of justice for the family.
Yes, round of applause for actual justice in that case.
But Scott, in one word, radiation, good or bad?
You know, it's kind of a loaded question, Coop.
I feel like you're setting me up for something.
No, I'm not setting you up for anything.
You know, I'm going to say good because I'm a positive person and I know that the sun's radiation is partly responsible for all the growth on our planet.
It's also responsible for amazing tan lines.
Yes, that's true.
That's true.
That's the reason I should have picked.
You always pick a better reason.
In one sentence, Scott, explain to our audience what radiation is.
Isn't it that, I'm not going to say substance, but isn't it that stuff that causes smaller lizards to grow into larger lizards?
You know, I think I've got that right.
You know, the lizards wreak havoc on coastal cities.
Oh yeah, I've seen that documentary.
It caused the incredible shrinking men.
Yeah, I think that's what you see in the dictionary when you look at radiation.
Very on point.
Oh, well, thank you, Coop.
Well, we all know that we are exposed to radiation on a constant basis.
Sometimes more, sometimes less.
But the absolute truth is that we are all constantly absorbing radiation.
It's literally everywhere.
It's in the dirt we eat, it's in the rocks we lick, it's in the gasoline we huff, and in the crack that we smoke.
Not only that, but it radiates in our TVs, our cell phones, our home appliances, and the power lines that grid this entire country.
And we bear all to get as complete of a radiation wash that we all enjoy getting at the beach by blasting ourselves with the sweet, sweet Amun Ra shining rays.
Yes, one of the many celestial beings that orbit around the center of the universe that is our perfect and godly Earth.
Flat Earth, if I may add.
Yes. That is correct.
The sun itself.
Oh, yeah.
6,000-year-old flat Earth coop.
Got to make sure to, you know, get the age right.
You got the dimensions right.
Let's throw the 6,000-year-old flat Earth.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Let me correct you real quick.
Sorry, I did not put that in there.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Radiation. What is it?
This is coming straight from the horse's mouth, that is, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scott? Yes, radiation, Coop, is energy that comes from a source and travels through space at the speed of light.
This energy has an electric field and a magnetic field associated with it and has wave-like properties.
You could also call radiation electromagnetic waves.
So why is radiation bad?
Let's not ask the CDC because they just want to make it sound fun.
Like something you just want to play with and swim in.
So let's ask cancer.org.
In large doses, radiation can cause serious tissue damage and increase a person's risk of later developing cancer.
The low doses of radiation used for imaging tests might increase a person's cancer risk slightly, but it's important to put this risk into perspective.
Yeah, we all know radiation can cause us to develop cancer.
Yeah, we get it.
But in reality here, we are going to ignore your typical, it's cool because everyone's getting it melanoma, and instead focus on the more serious damages caused by high levels of radiation on humans.
Now what follows is a bit complicated, but bear with me, alright?
Yeah. Now it's said, on average, Americans get...
Between 2 and 3 millisieverts of radiation each day.
This, of course, varies per location, and obviously some areas of the world have higher levels of sieverts, and generally speaking, the higher the altitude means higher levels of radiation due to less atmospheric protection.
And I'll note here that 1,000 millisieverts is equal to 1 sievert.
And to give you an idea of some measurements of the radiation that we purposely get...
Such as a single x-ray exposes you to about 0.1 millisievert, a mammogram about 0.4, which is also about the same you would get after about 7 weeks of natural background exposure.
A CT scan will expose you to about 10 millisieverts or 1,000 millirems.
While a PET scan or CT scan will expose you to, you know, anywhere between 10 and 25 millisieverts or 25,000 millirems.
And this equates to about eight years of background radiation.
Now, you could be exposed to all of these things on a regular basis, and certainly your risk of developing at least one type of cancer is dramatically increased, but that doesn't mean that your skin is going to fall off and your eyes will melt like dollops of Velveeta cheese in the microwave, or that your organs are going to completely liquefy inside your body.
Aww. Too bad.
Yeah, too bad.
Absorbing radiation is actually...
It's unavoidable.
It's inescapable, if you will.
So there isn't too much to truly worry about.
And a side note, Scott.
I mean, don't you think it's kind of weird that humans, through all of our adaptations that we've gone through over millions of years, you know, starting with our early predecessor, that we have no natural shield against the sun, such as thick hair, or, you know, unlike most other mammals,
land-walking mammals, we can't walk or swim within mere moments of our birth.
You know, like...
Most mammals.
Because think about it.
You've watched nature shows, National Geographic and whatnot.
When an antelope is born or a giraffe or whatever, it comes out, falls on the ground, struggles for a little bit, but pretty much stands within moments, basically jumping around, playing around, doing backflips and shit.
Humans can't do that.
It takes humans months, if not at least a year, for babies to actually start walking.
And even then, their walking is pretty questionable.
You know, you can push your baby over easily.
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that kind of makes you question, you know, you got years of serious caretaker-ing.
Caretaker-ing.
That's my new, that's my, that's my, that's my verb of the day.
Before you can even, and then you're still, I mean, no, it just goes on and on and on.
I mean, animals have that newborn adaptation down.
They show them how to eat.
They show him how to hunt.
Boom. Done.
The animal's basically ready to be weaned off the parent animal.
So, yeah, it just kind of makes you...
Yeah, you'd think that we would have full-body hair.
Like, why did all our hair disappear when it makes more sense to have hair?
Yeah, totally.
Doesn't make sense, bro.
Doesn't make sense, man.
Doesn't make sense, bro.
It doesn't make sense, man.
Totally. And as I was doing a little research when writing about mammals, I ended up reading about venomous mammals, and I completely forgot that the platypus, they're venomous.
In fact, the most venomous mammal, they say.
And I have something to say about that, but not yet.
They have a spur on their hind leg that contains about a teaspoon's worth of venom, and while not fatal to humans, it's very painful and long-lasting.
There are also various shrews around the world that have poisonous saliva, and there are moles with the same.
There's what is called a selenodon.
What the fuck was that?
yeah called a selenodon which is mainly found around hispaniola places like cuba haiti dominican republic and these things look like much fiercer rats and they can weigh about three pounds they have a venom which
is released the through their incisors when they bite and these are not dangerous to humans and then bro there's what is called a slow loris
A slow loris, huh?
That sounds to me like it could be...
Some kind of sexual term or maybe someone's unfortunate obese childhood nickname?
I don't know.
I'm not speaking from experience or anything.
Was that your nickname?
Was that your nickname in school?
Dang it, you got me, man.
You're triggering me right now.
I'm going to have to take this abuse much longer.
Sorry, that's not trigger the man.
Feeling very triggered.
A slow loris is a primate that is super cute and they have little sacks.
All right.
Oh, boy.
Sack to the mouth.
Sack to the mouth.
When bitten, the result is an anaphylactic shock and even possible death.
These guys, they're captured and traded illegally, and the smugglers actually, they actually remove their teeth.
Which often causes infection and the death of the slow loris.
And when I was reading this, I thought, well, then wouldn't the slow loris be the most dangerous mammal rather than the platypus?
And so I read more.
And I found that the platypus is still considered the most venomous mammal, even though no deaths have been attributed to it.
But deaths have been attributed to the slow loris.
So what the fuck, Scott?
Yeah, well, you know, for all intents and purposes, let it be known then.
That today, as of now, the platypus is no longer the most poisonous or venomous mammal.
That award has now been bequeathed to the Slow Loras.
Congratulations, Slow Loras.
Yes, yes, a round of applause.
It's been a tough fight.
Started at the bottom.
Now you're here.
I like it.
Justice served today.
You heard it first.
You heard it first here.
Thank you, Slow Loras, for all that you have done for the animal kingdom.
And as a token of our appreciation, here's a set of keys to this city.
It's all yours.
Now we're all dead.
Now let's go back to the science books.
Just for a minute.
And then we'll get on to the actual story.
1,000 bacterils is equal to 1 kilo bacteril.
Scientists tell us that about 5,000 bacterils are generally safe in humans, per se.
And like I said earlier, radiation is everywhere.
Everything we eat and drink contains radiation to some level.
For example, a banana contains about 18.5 back rolls, and I just bought a hand of bananas.
I got like six bananas, so yeah.
I am going to eat some back rolls today.
But while we are constantly absorbing radiation, the radiation also has what's called a half-life, or a rate of disintegration, and one back roll disintegrates every second.
So while we are being radiated, the radiation is also disintegrating, as is its nature.
The dangers of radiation are more specifically tied to being exposed to extremely high levels of radiation in a very small period of time, making it nearly impossible to survive the time it takes for the radiation to disintegrate.
Now, radiation is extremely complex, and I'm not going to try to sound like I know what I'm talking about because I do not, but we'll try to explain this in the simplest of layman's terms.
The Roentgen equivalent man, or R-E-M, is used to measure the potential harm that radiation causes to the human body.
In general, 5REM is the current annual permitted dose for a radiation worker in the United States.
The average exposure to humans in the United States from natural sources of radiation is typically between 300 and 400 millirems per year, but can be anywhere up to about 620 as the elevation rises.
But it's important to note that it is generally agreed upon by scientists that 5,000 millirems or 5 REM is what a human body can handle before serious health risks begin to take effect.
So 10 millirem equals 100 sieverts, which equals 37 baccarils.
So 1 REM equals 10 millisieverts, which equals 1 kilobaccaril.
You know,
Coop, this whole time...
Coop, I've been thinking you were talking about the band, R.E.M.
So I was, I now see that I was remiss.
I was, you were talking about Rundgen, equivalent man, and not the end of the world as we know it.
Anyway, sorry to interrupt.
The end of the world as we know it.
As we know it, yep.
I know, that could cause some bodily harm, I feel like.
At least some mental harm.
Listening to too much REM?
Listening to too much REM, man.
Well, let's talk about a guy who became the victim of a horrendous workplace accident that took place in Japan.
Some say that he holds the title for being The Most Radiated Man in History.
But that isn't necessarily correct.
The title of The Most Radiated Man in History, or Most Accumulated Radiation, It actually goes to a man named Albert Stevens, who, on May 14, 1945, was injected with 131 kBq of plutonium without his knowledge.
Remember, scientists say that 5,000 kBq absorbed in one year is considered safe to humans.
Albert Stevens had accumulated a radiation dose of 64 Sieverts, or 6400 REM, but he didn't get that dose of radiation all at once, but rather over a period of 20 years.
Or about 300 REM per year.
Remember, for a radiation worker, someone who was always working around dangerous levels of radiation, only 5 REM is permitted.
So he had roughly 60 times the permitted limit in one year.
Hey Coop, you mentioned that he, this Albert Stevens, was quote-unquote injected with plutonium without his knowledge, end quote.
You mind giving us a little bit more information on that?
Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that's curious what exactly that means.
Sure. So Albert Stevens unwittingly became a test subject of the Manhattan Project, where in 1945, he was injected with 0.2 micrograms of plutonium-238 isotopes with a half-life of about 88 years and 0.75 micrograms of plutonium-239,
which is the primary isotope used for nuclear weapons manufacturing.
It has a half-life of 24,100 years.
From 1944 until 1974, it's estimated that at least 20,000 people were unethically experimented on by government doctors, military officials, and scientists, all funded by federal tax dollars, and the most accredited of institutions all had their long,
bony fingers in that research.
You see, Stevens was a house painter, where in California, he checked into a hospital complaining about intense pain in his stomach.
The doctors there conducted surgery and found a carcinomatous mass that had grown into his spleen and liver.
And that's what they said, anyway.
They removed half of his liver, his entire spleen, his ninth rib, a part of his pancreas, some lymph nodes, and a part of the stomach as a means to prevent further spread of cancer.
cancer that the doctors falsely claimed Stephen
I'm sorry, what's your letter?
Nobel laureate Earl Miller...
A mental health expert in his time and his brother, Dr. John Lawrence, and a fellow scientist, Kenneth Scott, were the ones who injected him with this experimental treatment.
In reality, they were experimenting with the effects that radiation had on the human body, which was going on since the 1930s, if not earlier.
In fact, one Dr. Joseph Gilbert Hamilton, a Manhattan Project doctor, Ah, so early.
Dr. Robert Stone, a health director working with the Manhattan Project, urged them to develop a program which could trace the course of plutonium through the human body.
So they developed this experimental program where the test subjects would be completely unaware that they were being used as test subjects while being injected with exceptionally high levels of plutonium isotopes.
The program was approved in early 1945, and three tests were to take place in three locations.
On April 10th, the first would take place at the Manhattan Project Army Hospital in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The second would be on April 26th at the Billings Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and the third would happen at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco on May 14th.
Albert Stevens was selected to be that location's test subject and would from then on be known as Cal 1. Subsequent projects would be labeled Cal 2, Cal 3, and so on.
As such, Stevens was not the only guinea pig in these experiments.
18 people who were aged anywhere between 4 to 69 and who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness had been chosen.
And out of those 18 people, Stevens was given a much higher dose, and he was the only one who did not actually have cancer.
So this would indicate that the doctors who chose Stevens did so because they truly did believe he had terminal cancer rather than a simple ulcer.
And Earl Miller, his radiologist, later said that he was chosen because Stevens was, quote-unquote, doomed to die.
But I'm not entirely convinced.
Yeah, I mean, I believe we're all, quote-unquote, doomed to die, so that's not a very good excuse.
I mean, you could have just pulled anyone off the street and been like, oh, you're doomed to die, and therefore you're a perfect test subject.
Let's inject you with plutonium isotope, you know?
Like, that's messed up, dude.
Yeah, I mean, that's basically what they did.
Yeah, poor guy.
Later, like soon after the surgery, Stevens'organs were analyzed and they found something shocking.
Stevens didn't have cancer.
Oh, special studies,
huh? Isn't that, uh...
Yeah, isn't that kind of like the Mary Kay Letourneau story?
You know, she kept that student after school for some special studies and then went to prison for seven years?
I remember that.
That was pretty crazy.
That was February 1997.
A little bit of special studying going on.
And she served 80...
Yeah, he was 13 years old at the time.
A female teacher got together and...
Everybody found out, of course, and she was sent to prison.
She served 80 days and was let out on parole and then was caught immediately with the boy again.
And then she did the full seven years.
But you know they got married, Coop.
She got out, they got married in 2005.
They had two children.
I mean, it's crazy, dude.
I think they just got a divorce back in 2017, actually.
Oh, yeah.
Actually, I remember hearing about that.
Yeah, they split up.
In 2017.
But they lasted for a long time.
I mean, you know, that's like a respectable amount for any couple.
20 years, bro.
That's a long time.
That's a long time, bro.
And I wonder what that kid had, bro.
I mean, if she was into him, you could hold a conversation with her.
That's what it was.
Whatever it was.
She went to prison for him, dog.
She went to prison for him.
Got out after, what, seven or eight years or something?
Seven years?
Seven years.
I haven't married his ass, so whatever it was.
That was true love.
That was true love.
That only lasted 20 years.
That only lasted 20 years.
It's about 20 times longer than most celebrity marriages.
That's true.
So you've got to give him some cred there.
Interestingly, none of the 18 were said to have died from the plutonium itself, but rather from pre-existing terminal illness or a terminal heart problem.
And all of those test subjects would die anywhere between 6 days to 44 years.
Apparently, the only noticeable damages of the poisoning was detected 10 years after Stevens' injection in the form of degeneration of the lumbar region of his spine, including several degenerated discs.
And as we know, heavy metals accumulate in the bones, such as plutonium.
So Stevens would go on to live until he was 79 years old, only dying from heart disease in 1966.
And in 1993...
Hazel O'Leary, the Secretary of Energy, made some public statements about victim compensation, and in 1996, $4.8 million was awarded to the 12 surviving victims.
So that's good.
More justice.
Do you know if that's, I know this is not important, but was that 4.8 each?
Or is that a total of 4.8?
Yeah, that had to go out to 12 surviving victims.
I mean, in 1990s money, I guess that probably went a little bit further than it would these days.
Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.
A little bit.
Okay, so that was a little side journey as we continue on our way with our main journey.
And our main journey is to talk about the most radiated man in history.
Not an accumulation of radiation like Albert Stevens, but a poisoning that happened all at once during a workplace accident at the Tokamira Nuclear Fuel Processing Plant in Japan.
at 10:35 a.m.
on the 30th of September in 1999.
Hasashi Auchi, he was 35 years old, and on that day he was working inside the nuclear power plant as a lab technician.
He was one of three men set to task on enriching uranium, a very dangerous operation.
This would be the first time that this level of uranium enrichment for fuel would take place since 1997, and in 1997, that process failed miserably, becoming the region's first serious nuclear-related incident.
And while I found no reports of deaths directly associated with that accident, at least 37 people were shown to have high levels of trace radiation, and naturally, the Japanese government immediately,
But this event was heavily overshadowed by what was soon to come.
54 years old and Masato Shinohara, 39, were working with Asashi as they mixed together nitric acid and uranium inside of a steel tank.
More correctly, Yokokawa was sitting at a desk either 4 feet away or 13 feet away depending on which story you read.
Yokokawa was their supervisor.
Ah, so that's why he was sitting at his desk.
Also, 13...
You said 13 feet away.
13 is Taylor Swift's favorite number.
Did you know that?
That's a fantastic fact to bring to our audience because I know the majority of our listeners are T-Swift fans.
But actually, Yokokawa was originally in the position where Auchi would later be because Yokokawa became tired of holding a funnel and wanted to sit down, so Auchi then took over.
The process involved multiple carefully timed steps while mixing several elements inside the steel tank.
The process was highly volatile and one misstep could cause disaster, which is why there are steps that need to be taken very carefully.
For whatever reasons, the Japanese government had, especially after the 1997 incident, They were experimenting to see if any of those steps could be skipped in order to speed up the process.
Oh, well, that seems like a good idea, don't you think, Coop?
Why not, you know?
We just had this huge nuclear incident in 97. Let's see if we can skip some steps.
Yeah, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at that meeting where they were trying to come up with how they're going to improve and move forward.
And they're like, yeah, we're going to make a lot of steps to prevent this from happening.
And then in a couple years, we're going to try to figure out how we can skip most of those steps so we can improve efficiency.
Let's just skip A and start at W. Just mix all that stuff in there.
I don't know.
Mix all that stuff in there, bro.
By hand, too.
Unfortunately. All of the experimenting caused them to miss an important deadline that they had in generating important fuel.
So, these three men decided that they would please their boss by taking a shortcut to produce the much-needed fuel quicker than expected, and they could all have some whale meat as a reward.
Interestingly, none of these men had training in the procedure that they were currently carrying out.
Also, this plant was said to never have been inspected by an oversight committee on nuclear safety since it's been in operation.
Oh man, this seems like a perfect storm brewing up the outcome.
What does the task that they were working on look like?
The following comes from Wikipedia.
Scott, if you would.
Enriching nuclear fuel requires precision and has the potential to impose extreme risks to technicians.
If done improperly...
The process of combining nuclear products can produce a fission reaction, which in turn produces radiation.
In order to enrich the uranium fuel, a specific chemical purification procedure is required.
The steps included feeding small batches of uranium oxide powder into a designated dissolving tank in order to produce urinal nitrate using nitric acid.
Next, the mixture is carefully transported to a specially crafted buffer tank.
The buffer tank, containing the combined ingredients, is specially designed to prevent fission activity from reaching criticality.
In a precipitation tank, ammonia is added, forming a solid product.
This tank is meant to capture any remaining nuclear waste contaminants.
In the final process, uranium oxide is placed in the dissolving tanks until purified, without enriching the isotopes, in a wet process technology specialized in the air.
Thank you, Scott.
The actual process...
The SAFE process consisted of having to use automatic pumps to mix 5.3 pounds of urinal nitrate into the enriched uranium inside of the steel vat.
This step, and pretty much every step, was ignored, such as bypassing the use of the buffer tanks, which was necessary to avoid making a mistake.
And the tank wasn't even designed to hold the amount and type of solution that they had in it.
So instead of using the pumps, they decided to manually pour the urinal nitrate from steel buckets into the precipitation tank full of 30 pounds of uranium, which was way more than what was supposed to be in it.
As the seventh bucket was emptied into the tank by Shinohara, all of a sudden, criticality was reached, and the room was engulfed in a bright blue flash.
This flash was the uncontrolled nuclear fission that instantly emitted very intense gamma and neutron radiation in lethal amounts.
The blue flash is also thought to have been what is known as Cherenkov radiation, which is an electromagnetic radiation when a charged particle, think electron, passes through a dielectric medium at a greater speed than the phase velocity of light in that medium.
Basically, it's similar to a sonic boom that a jet would create when traveling faster than the speed of sound, only this wasn't in the air per se, but rather within the cloud of radiation.
And I might be entirely wrong about everything I just said, but you know what?
I'm contractually obligated to read what I have in front of me, so that is what we're doing here at the Paranautica Podcast.
If you want to make any corrections, please send them to Paranautica at gmail.com.
That's P-A-R-A-N-A-U-G-H-T-A-T-I-C-A, messed that up, at gmail.com.
Thank you, Scott.
There was also another issue.
Most fuel plants use what's called the dry process because in a wet process, which uses water, the water actually speeds up the reaction, making it more powerful and, of course, more dangerous.
The dry process can also handle larger quantities of material.
These guys were using the wet process.
What the hell, man?
And once that initial fission took place, it set off a chain reaction that emitted high levels of radiation for almost 20 hours over an area of at least 2 miles from the epicenter.
So why are we talking about Hisashi Yauchi?
Well, because he was the closest to the nucleus of the reaction and therefore sustained the worst injuries caused by radiation.
Hence, the probably accurate tag, the most radiated man in history!
Thank you, Scott.
Hisashi was leaning over the tank holding a funnel while Shinohara stood just a little bit away on a platform pouring the uranium into the funnel.
And as I mentioned earlier, Yokokawa, he was sitting at a desk either 4 feet away or 13 feet away.
And once criticality hit, the three men immediately felt pain, became ill, and had difficulty breathing.
Auchi and Shinohara went to the decontamination room where Auchi began vomiting.
Why Yokokawa did not follow I do not know.
I presume he just booked it out of the nearest door as quick as possible, but he had to have known that he had...
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
The next morning, workers returned to the facility to drain water from the cooling jacket surrounding the precipitation tank, putting a stop to the 20-hour reaction.
By the afternoon, any remaining facility employees were told to evacuate, and the surrounding population of about 300,000 people were either evacuated or told to stay indoors.
So now that damage control has been taken care of, life could carry on as usual for most, but not for Hisashi and his two colleagues.
Yokokawa, he had it the best by far.
Oh, sure.
Well, I mean, it comes with a position.
You know, he was a supervisor.
He was higher on the pay scale.
It's all about the perks you get with those positions, Coop.
True, true, true.
He was furthest away from the reaction and only received three sieverts of radiation and only had to remain in the hospital for six months.
Shinohara, on the other hand, received ten sieverts of radiation.
And over a period of about seven months, he went through skin graft after skin graft, some being successful, some being not.
He also had to have numerous blood transfusions, the blood of which being mostly made from congealed umbilical cord blood, which would help boost his blood count.
Oh, you mean, uh, stem cells?
You know, I can't really help but think about that South Park episode with Christopher Reeves.
Thank you, everyone.
To most people, this is just an ordinary fetus.
But to people like me, it's hope.
You know, like, what was that back in the 2000s?
That was the Crazy Cripples episode, actually.
I think that was 2003.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dude, that was so ridiculous.
Remember Christopher Reeves goes around sucking stem cells out of fetuses in order to cure his quadriplegia or some shit?
I can't believe they were able to put that out on the airwaves.
And Christopher Reeves, of course, being best known for his role as Superman in the 1978 film Superman.
And then his three sequels.
Yep, he definitely got bucked off a horse at some equestrian show and ended up being paralyzed from the shoulders down.
Yeah, you know, he actually became a Scientologist in 1975, but he came to his senses and chose not to join.
And then he became an outspoken critic of the organization, so kudos to him.
The late, late Christopher Reeves.
He passed in 2004.
You know, something I didn't think about before, Coop.
What's that?
He became a critic of Scientology, right?
I'm starting to think maybe L. Ron Hubbard switched out the horses that day.
Oh, shit!
Conspiracy moment.
I like it.
Go on.
He was probably supposed to ride Lois Lane and got switched to old Bucky Kryptonite.
Oh, snap!
By L. Ron Hubbard himself?
Yeah. L. Ron Hubbard did it, man.
I'm telling you.
Just took him right out.
Oh, man.
L. Ron Hubbard.
Ron Hubbard's got a lot of blood on his hands.
You know what?
I think you're onto something there, because there have been a number of questionable deaths associated with outspoken critics of Scientology.
We'll save that for another episode, but I think you're onto something with that.
Yeah, we should definitely come back to that.
The old horse switcheroo.
The old, yes, the old hat trick.
Oldest trick in the book.
Shinohara's seven-month procedure seemed to be working up to a certain point, and there was even speculation that he would be released.
But ultimately...
Due to the radiation causing constant infection leading to internal bleeding that could not be stopped and his multiple organs failing, it is said that he died from fatal lung and kidney failure.
He had gone through many skin grafts, and many worked, many did not.
Strangely, the areas of skin that had successfully grafted, it lost all its softness.
And the medical examiner said the skin became like armor.
And during his autopsy...
In the medical examiner's notes, it was said that his skin made a crunching sound as he cut into it.
That is so gross, dude.
Dude, what is that?
Yeah, ew.
So you're probably thinking, well, it's not looking too good for Hisashi Auchi.
And you wouldn't be wrong.
Hisashi Auchi received 17 sieverts of radiation, 14 more than his supervisor, Yokokawa, and 7 more than Shinohara.
The thing is that Auchi did die 83 days after the criticality, but his colleagues survived 7 months or about 213 days.
Auchi was long dead while Shinohara was still going through unsuccessful skin grafts and a multitude of many other attempted life-saving operations.
And while both Shinohara and Auchi suffered similar injuries, Auchi's conditions were much more severe than Shinohara's.
Auchi was blasted with so much radiation that it literally shattered every chromosome in his body.
Oh, damn.
This meant that there was no blueprint for his body to reproduce cells.
So what cells he did have would still go on living and carrying out the processes that they were programmed to do, but as we know, all organic matter must deteriorate, as is the design of life.
Auchi had virtually no white blood cells and therefore no immune system, and therefore completely susceptible to any bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasites.
They say that when someone is hit with so much radiation as Auchi was, that the person is technically dead right at the moment of the criticality.
Oh, man.
So he would be conscious, he'd be able to speak and hear, he'd be able...
He appeared normal, but all of that would slowly change as the cells in his body could not replicate.
This phase, from the moment of immense radiation poisoning to the time of certain death, is referred to as the walking ghost phase.
Death is imminent any time anyone is exposed to more than 10 severs of radiation.
So, technically, Shinohara was also a walking ghost.
Auchi was intensively treated with any medical intervention that they had available.
Initially, they took blood from his sister and harvested the stem cells from it, and transfused that into Auchi, making him the world's first recipient of peripheral blood stem cells.
That worked for a little while, but whatever healthy cells he had left...
Interestingly, Ayochi wasn't aware of the gravity of the situation at first.
He is noted to have asked the nurses when he'd be able to leave the hospital.
He was even asking them if it was likely that someone exposed to the levels of radiation that he had been exposed to would develop any form of cancer.
His skin began to disintegrate and literally fall off.
It was here that he was beginning to understand the weight of what was happening to him.
And to those somewhat familiar with this case, Aouchi did not beg for the doctors to let him die as is commonly thought and spread all over Reddit.
Auchi did say that he was not a guinea pig and became frustrated at a certain point, saying that he just wanted to go home.
But contrary to the tale that he was begging for the doctors to let him die, that just isn't true.
And those facts come from the book A Slow Death.
Yep. Yep.
Yep. Before the tube was placed on his throat, he told his wife that he loved her,
and those would be the last words that a Hasashi Auchi would ever speak.
Within two months, his entire body would need to be covered with a special form of gauze that was softer and easier to apply to his open and worsening wounds.
This isn't to say that his skin was completely missing from 100% of his body, because it wasn't.
In fact, much of his front still had skin.
Most of his chest still had skin.
His hands, portions of his legs, and other areas still had skin.
It was pretty much his entire backside that was missing his skin.
Weird. Like he had just been scalded by boiling water.
The process of applying the gauze to his entire body took ten people and no less than three hours.
This would have to be done at least once a day.
The gauze would be weighed after being removed from his body to see how much fluid that they would need to replace into his body in their desperate attempts to save him.
His body was unable to produce body heat, so he needed to be placed in a heated room.
It would be right around this point that all of his fingernails and his toenails would fall out.
And his eyelids were gone.
Ew. The debilitated Auchi was also given a series of colonoscopies throughout the entire procedure so that the doctors could ensure that his intestines were still in working order.
Obviously, in the early stages, things looked fine from a medical standpoint, but over time, the membrane became damaged and severe diarrhea set in.
Soon, the membrane would completely die and separate from the intestinal wall.
This would then lead to massive internal bleeding, and as you'd expect, death.
At the two-month mark, Iwuchi would suffer from three heart attacks in quick succession, each time he was revived.
During those heart attacks, his breathing would stop for a total of 95 minutes, and his heart would stop for 49 minutes.
That's insane!
That's so insane.
After four minutes of lack of oxygen, you have irreversible brain damage, you know?
So, like, 95 minutes over an hour?
I don't understand, really, why they tried to revive him.
I mean, because at that point, you're not coming back.
Yeah. You know?
Not all of you is coming back.
There's a lot of speculation on why they were trying so hard to keep him alive, and a lot of it was his family.
They were like, you know, keep him alive.
You can get through this.
I don't know why, man, because there was a lot of, like, controversy about why they kept reviving him after the heart attacks.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me.
With those kinds of numbers coming up, I mean, just let him go.
It was at this point that his body pretty much stopped responding to all sorts of stimulus testing, such as the pulmonary light reflex, which is simply shining a light into your eye and watching the pupil dilate.
Then his kidneys and his liver failed.
Following this, he had to be fully assisted by a ventilator in order to keep his breathing consistent.
His automatic nervous system had almost completely failed at this point.
In their attempt to manage Auchi's failing blood pressure, they gave him four different blood pressure medications, which may have helped maintain his blood pressure, but it also caused very poor blood circulation to his hands and his feet.
This then caused his fingertips to essentially become black and hard.
Then, 81 days into the ordeal, the doctors finally issued a do-not-resuscitate order.
His family surrounded him and pleaded for him to keep fighting, telling him that he could make it through this.
They would do this for the next two days.
It was then, on December 21, 1999, that Asashi Auchi would finally succumb to his injuries 83 days after the criticality.
There would be six men who worked for the same nuclear plant that would be charged and convicted for his death.
This included Yataka Yokokawa, Aouchi's and Shinohara's supervisor.
They would all be found guilty of professional negligence and sentenced anywhere between two and three years.
Of his part, Yokokawa would later say, We were not educated on how to avoid criticality.
I thought it was fine to pour a large volume of uranium solution into the tank.
This would ultimately tighten down on safety measures within the company and to Japan in general.
But as we know, Japan has a long history of nuclear power plant disasters.
But that brings us to the end of the story of Hisashi Auchi, The Walking Ghost.
The most radiated man in history!
Scary stuff.
You know, I wonder, do people who live near nuclear power plants get cheaper rent?
Oh, damn.
You know, I've never looked into that or...
Done any research on that, but they should!
Yeah, maybe we have a listener who lives near a nuclear power plant who can tell us.
Yeah, well, if you're a listener of the Paranautica podcast who happens to live near a nuclear power plant, please shoot us an email at paranautica at gmail.com and let us know if your rent is cheaper because you live near said nuclear power plant.
I want to know this, because if it's cheaper, I'm going to find the nearest nuclear power plant.
I'm moving immediately.
Find an apartment.
With that said, did you know that giraffes hum to each other at night?
It's to make sure that their herd stays together.
Researchers from the University of Vienna took 947 hours of giraffe noises over an eight-year span at three zoos.
And they found that.
Oh man, those guys need to get a life, bro.
They get paid so much money to do that shit, though.
They should release a movie called 947 Hours.
Just really build it up.
Everyone's going to be like, oh man.
It's another...
It's Everest!
And it's just giraffe noise.
It's just giraffe humming.
Rated R. Rated R. Oh, it's like that movie The Bridge.
You ever watch that?
No, I never watched The Bridge.
It's more like a documentary.
It's about the Golden Gate Bridge and the suicides.
So this guy set up a camera every day and filmed...
The bridge from this one location every day for a full year just to record how many people would die or would jump to their death.
It is a depressing fucking movie, bro.
I bet.
Oh my god.
I can't even imagine.
That sounds like a good first date movie.
Hey, baby.
Let's go watch the bridge.
Let's watch the bridge.
Really just test the person just to see if you can make it through the bridge.
Yeah, right.
Date one.
It's probably the right person.
Oh, of course.
And according to CNN, scientists have found that humans only have two innate fears.
The fear of falling and the fear of loud sounds.
All of the other fears are said to be learned.
Good to know.
PSA. Did you know that?
I have not heard that before, but that makes sense.
It checks out.
How about this next one?
Nomophobia. Do you know what that is?
Nomophobia. I don't.
I've never heard of that before.
It's the fear of not having your cell phone.
Oh. You know what the term comes from?
I don't.
I've never heard of that before.
It comes from no mobile phone phobia.
Oh. Nomophobia.
Nomophobia. And you know you can tell the temperature by listening to a cricket's chirps.
That makes sense.
You do this by counting how many chirps are in a 15 second time span and then adding 37 and you'll get a good approximation of the temperature outside.
I... This is a...
This is out of my...
This is out of my league, my friend.
I don't know.
Some person with a lot of fucking time on their hands and a lot of crickets.
I wonder who figured that out.
Probably got kicked off of the 900-hour giraffe humming expedition.
Right. And they just...
You know what?
Why don't you go listen to some cricket chirps?
Or he had like a...
That's his thesis.
Yeah. He released his paper ahead of them, even though he got kicked out.
And also, this one's interesting.
There's an ant.
A species of ant that lives in a 14-block area of New York City.
And this ant apparently exists nowhere else on Earth.
Are you sure they weren't talking about, like, somebody's ant?
You know, like Aunt Mildred or something like that?
She's fucking everywhere, bro.
Well, on that note, Coop, thanks for those random-ass facts.
I'm sure our listeners appreciated that.
So next week, we all know it's Valentine's Day, so we'll do something special for next week's episode for everyone's favorite holiday.
We don't know exactly what it will be, but it will be relevant to V-Day.
And yes, it'll come out after next Tuesday, which is V-Day, but whatever, you know?
So feel free to bring your loved one, your Valentine, if you will, snuggle up and listen to whatever scrumptious, lovesick, Lovey-dovey.
All those other emotional adjectives that I can't think of right now.
Material that we have prepared for you.
And everyone else, thank you so much for tuning in to today's show.
If you have time, if you have a second, go check out our other episodes and walk down the rabbit hole.
Journey with us and become Paranauts.
Just like the cool kids.
You can follow us on Twitter at Paranautica.
Visit us on Facebook and email us at paranautica at gmail dot com.
That's P-A-R-A-N-A-U-G-H-T-I-C-A at gmail dot com.
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