Newspaper of the time reporting the accident |
(Translated and compiled by Saya)
24: Anonymous 2006/10/15(Sun) 02:09:41 ID:lLO+L+yO0
Tokaimura criticality accident, triggered by JCO
Tokaimura nuclear accident in 1999
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident
The worst civilian nuclear radiation accident in Japan prior to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011.
969 :Anonymous:2006/10/15(日) 01:53:32 ID:yo9f4S3g0
>>960
From what I heard, the workers's bodies were severely damaged by neutron
and lost all regenerative ability
The report spoke of necrosis in some parts of the bodies and they died of heart attacks?
981 :Anonymous:2006/10/15(Sun) 01:55:08 ID:LRvDvToC0
>>969
I saw the pictures.
His body was a total wreck but he was still alive.
Really horrible...
A black-and-white photo of the faces of one of the victims in the course of his treatment:
*WARNING contains graphic image*
http://siustoreroom.blogspot.com/2018/09/tokaimura-accident-victim.html
28: Anonymous: 2006/10/15(Sun) 12:54:51 ID:iyomPQM50
>>24
Everyone would agree that they would rather die than suffer this way.
Right after the exposure to radiation, he had some blisters, but otherwise he looked normal.
But being exposed to high radiation doses shatter your DNA and as a result your body stops generating new cells.
The brain and heart cells have slower metabolism, so they are the last ones to be affected by radiation damage.
So even though your body is ruined beyond repair, you are still fully conscious, and since your heart is still working you stay alive.
They injected a large dosage of morphine - beyond the limit of what a human body can normally endure - into his body, but it had no effect on him.
Everyday, he was given litres after litres of blood transfusion and had 2 to 3 kg of diarrhea (his internal organs were dissolving and coming out of his body as fluids).
His heart had been beating as fast as someone who is doing the 100 metre sprint, ever since the accident.
It meant the modern medical science had advanced to the point that it could keep someone in such a condition alive, but that wasn't the sole reason why his life was prolonged.
He was regarded as a "rare case" and became the object of study, falling prey to eager scientists and researchers, and because those people kept flocking in from all over the world to observe him, they couldn't let him die even if they wanted to.
When I think about how it was all caused by the sloppy supervision, I can't help but feel human beings are by far scarier than any paranormal beings.
Those who had been irradiated cannot even be allowed to be laid in rest in ordinary graves. I can only wish them R.I.P.
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Below is a snippet of the documentary that contains a brief description of the accident and also interviews given by the doctor and nurses who cared for Mr. Ouchi:
The same documentary in full length with English subtitles:
The transcript of the video:
http://siustoreroom.blogspot.com/2018/09/tokaimura-criticality-accident-1999.html
The radiation damage also appeared on the surface of his body. About a week after the accident, scars from removing surgical tape became no longer able to heal.
"At first, we used surgical tape as usual. However, it became more and more frequent that his skin was ripped off along with the removed tape. Eventually, we couldn't use surgical tape anymore."
Healthy skin cells divide rapidly and new cells replace old ones. However, in Ouchi's irradiated skin, new cells were no longer generated. His old skin was falling off. Intense pain in his skin. The battle against infection. He had developed fluid retention in his lungs and he began to experience difficulty in breathing.
These are Ouchi's words in his nursing records.
(I can't stand it!)
(I wanna go home!)
(Stop it!)
(Mom!)
The medical team considered putting him on a respirator to help him breathe easier. That meant he would become unable to have conversations with his family. Ouchi talked to his wife who visited him.
"At that time, Mr. Ouchi was probably feeling weariness and heaviness, and he seemed to need to gather strength just to speak. In spite of that, he was smiling slightly and said to his wife 'I love you' in a tender tone. Seeing that kind of scenes made our hearts ache. It was true that nobody knew for sure what would happen to him, but we were able to imagine that his condition would get worse and worse. I guess he himself was also aware of that. In that situation, he told his family of his love. I wonder how he felt when he said to his wife 'I love you.' I think it was a heartwarming moment, but ... I don't know what to say ... I think his words represented what he wanted to tell his family."
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20:Anonymous: 2012/8/15/ 21:06:12 : p1Jwnbn1zY
One nurse who cared for Mr. Ouchi said that all of his skin completely fell off, and his whole body had to be soaked in silver nitrate solution* for disinfection, and to her the whole scene was like "Hell on Earth."
If this kind of facts became more widely known, I suspect there would be no one left who would approve of nuclear power plants.
*Danger of silver nitrate (pdf)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: The article linked below contains GRAPHIC IMAGES at the bottom
Hisashi Ouchi, the Victim of Beyond Fatal Radiation Kept Alive for 83 Days Against His Will
Hisashi Ouchi was one of the technicians working at a facility operated by JCO (formerly Japanese Nuclear Fuel Conversion Co.) in Tokai of Ibaraki Perfecture. He is one of the two fatalities of Tokaimura nuclear accident that exposed him to, perhaps, the highest amount of radiation any human had exposed so far. The ethical value of his prolonged treatment and efforts to keep him alive, that lasted for almost three months despite his wishes and the pain he had to endure, was questioned and the efforts received criticism.
Comments
Wish you a nice week Saya, take care and stay safe because of the typhoon.
It's great you have an unbiased mind.
At the same time though, we have to imagine this sort of thing happening to us or to our loved ones.
I am reminded of a discussion we once had at school, about whether capital punishment is right or wrong.
The teacher said to us that it is all very well to be calm and discuss intellectually about advantages of capital punishment, but imagine if we ourselves are falsely accused and get to be on the receiving end of the capital punishment. Because in the past, there were real instances where people did get executed on false charges, so theoretically it can happen to anyone.
We can only say this whole experiment had some positive outcomes because we think this sort of thing only ever happens to "other people" and not to us. Don't you think so?
I first got to know about Unit 731 through a science teacher at school. He told us how the researchers in the unit referred to those unfortunate test subjects as "Logs." The teacher described to us one experiment they did, in which they put some "logs" into a vacuum chamber and observed them until they expired. Really gruesome.
The irony is that the experiments done by Unit 731 ended up helping greatly the advancement of the modern medical science. Very bizarre and disturbing too.
Thank you for wishing me have a nice week, dear Haem, I wish the same for you! :D <3 Unfortunately, another typhoon is coming this weekend... I wonder what's happening to the climate all over the world?? But thank you again for your kind wishes!
I can only pray that he found peace, and that this kind of thing never happens again! Even if I feel like unethical experiments are, sadly, always being conducted somewhere in the world :/
Nonetheless, thanks a lot for this post! Take care
Then somewhere in YouTube, a movie somewhat appeared on a list of related videos; the title is "The Men behind the Sun". It's a movie about the secretive Unit 731. The experiments are depicted well in the movie.
The video link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nblC28Ivdks
I hope we find a way to abolish all nuclear power plants in the world.
Thank you for your comment! Have a nice day and take care <3
a) His family wanted the doctors to continue the treatment, as they still hoped he could make it (it says so on 35:00 of the video). His family also approved of the doctors giving him experimental medicine.
b) The doctors and nurses were really trying to save him. They were moved by the love of his family and wanted to do it for them and for him. If you see the way they talk about the whole story, you can see they were really trying their best, day and night.
c) Not a single thing is mentioned about him being a guinea pig (his quote about that isn't mentioned either). Now, I understand that some things from this case might have been conveniently ''not mentioned'' in the video, but come on. Even if some of them were doing it for research, most of them were really trying to save him. Humans aren't that bad, and certainly not all of them. These people are humans, not monsters.
From the comments of the video, I also picked up that it was illegal to euthanise a patient in Japan, at least at that time. That includes not bringing him back after his heart stopped (unless the family agreed to that, which they hadn't at the time). Yes, I understand that sometimes the law is unethical, but killing him on purpose would be big trouble for the doctors, the nurses and their families. That means, they were bound both by law and by his family's will to continue.
So please, don't curse these people. They hoped, they tried their best and they failed. They are humans who were desperately trying to save someone, to win a battle against death, even if the odds were against them. I can't imagine how they felt. Some of them do mention they feel guilty for not giving up sooner, but can we blame them for not giving up saving someone's life?
I can only find this playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL65638A5DF41C59B2
hope it's the same
https://vimeo.com/114331256
and
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm31313466