The three men who died at SL1 on that cold January night deserved proper burials, and

their families deserved to be there.

But the nature of the accident made that much more difficult.

Richard McKinley, who was the only one to survive the initial blast, spent two hours on

the floor of the mangled reactor building before rescuers could reach him.

In that short period of time, he absorbed an enormous quantity of radiation, which as

I mentioned in the last episode would have been enough to eventually kill him if he hadn't

died of more acute injuries.

It took 24 hours to retrieve Jack Burns body, and a full six days to extract Dick Lake,

who was pinned to the ceiling.

So you can imagine how radioactive they had become, and not just their bodies.

Everything about them was screamingly hot.

All three bodies were so contaminated and activated.

All exposed neutrons can be activated, so the iron in our bodies, the fillings, you

know, your watch, belt buckle, everything could be activated.

All of those metals, both in and on their bodies, were made up of normally stable atoms.

But the uncontrolled chain reaction of the SL1 explosion released all these loose neutrons

that then bombarded those stable metal atoms and made many of them radioactive.

In addition, the blast embedded bits of uranium and fragments from the reactor into their bodies,

adding to the contamination problem.

One scientist said that the measurements of radiation coming off Dick Lake's body were

almost as high as those coming off the destroyed reactor itself.

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