So here, Gentle Reader, is your book of train wrecks, disguised as something in keeping with our 21st century anxieties. In this age, in which we strive for better sources of electrical and motive energy, there exists a deep fear of nuclear power, which makes accounts of its worst moments of destruction that much more important. The purpose of this book is not to convince you that nuclear power is unsafe beyond reason, or that it will lead to the destruction of civilization. On the contrary, I hope to demonstrate that nuclear power is even safer than transportation by steam and may be one of the key things that will allow life on Earth to keep progressing; but please form your own conclusions. The purpose is to make you aware of the myriad ways that mankind can screw up a fine idea while trying to implement it. Don’t be alarmed. This is the raw, sometimes disturbing side of engineering, about which much of humanity has been kept unaware. You cannot be harmed by just reading about it.
That story of the latest nuclear catastrophe, the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, will be held until near the end. We are going to start slowly, with the first known incident of radiation poisoning. It happened before the discovery of radiation, before the term was coined, back when we were blissfully ignorant of the invisible forces of the atomic nucleus.
Chapter 1:
We Discover Fire
“In Ozma’s boudoir hangs a picture in a radium frame. This picture appears to be of a pleasant countryside, but when anyone wishes for the picture to show a particular person or place, the scene will display what is wished for.”
It was hunting season in the Ozark Mountains in November 1879. Sport hunters Bill Henry, John Dempsey, and Bill Boyceyer of Barry County, Missouri, were out to shoot a wildcat. They had left their hunting party behind, chasing a cat through the dense woods with their enthusiastic hunting dog. The dog, with his seemingly boundless dog-energy, ran full tilt down a gulley, then straight up the side of a steep hill, chasing the cat through previously untrampled territory. The cat looked desperate. Leaping around on the side of the mountain, he disappeared into a black hole, and the hound did not hesitate to dive in after him.
The three men, somewhat winded from the pursuit, knew they had him now. They cocked their pieces, aimed high at the orifice, and waited for the cat to come blasting out. The wait became uncomfortable. Fifteen minutes, and not only was there no cat, but the dog hadn’t come back. They half-cocked their firearms and started to climb, but just then they heard the dog barking, somewhere on top of the hill. They whistled him down. He had obviously gone clean through the mountain and come out the other side.
Henry, Dempsey, and Boyceyer immediately found this hole in the side of the mountain more interesting than the wildcat. They had been around here before, but had never noticed the hole. It was oddly placed, and it would be easy to miss. It required investigation.
Cautiously, the three entered the opening. Shortly inside they saw along the wall what appeared to be a vein of pure, silvery metal, and dollar signs came up in their eyes. Could it be? Could they have stumbled into an undisturbed silver mine? It was growing dark, and they decided to retire to the hunting camp and do some planning. Nobody was to say anything to anybody about the hole, and they would return tomorrow for a more thorough exploration. The next morning they returned to the site, dogless this time but with a boy to help carry things. They lit pitch-pine torches and crawled into the opening, single file, with Henry leading. The cavern opened up, and everything in it looked strange and unfamiliar. At about two hundred feet in, the tunnel was partially blocked by what looked like a large tree trunk of solid silver. It was the strangest metal they had ever seen, with the bluish sheen of a peacock’s tail. In the yellow glare of the torches it seemed faceted, like a cut diamond. In the tight, unfamiliar surroundings, imaginations ran wild. Henry selected a free rock on the floor and used it to bang on the mineral column. A few unusually heavy pieces chipped off, and they put them in a small tin box for transport.
Still feeling the tingle of adventure, they squeezed one at a time past the silvery obstruction and pressed on. At an estimated five hundred feet from the entrance they entered an arched room, and their perceptions started to veer into hallucinogenic territory. The walls of the room shone like polished silver, the floor was a light blue, and the ceiling was supported by three transparent crystal columns. Hearts raced as the oxygen level dropped. The men each knew that they had found their eternal fortune, and in their minds, gently slipping away, they were already spending it. They pressed past the columns, and the torches started to sputter and die. The walls were starting to get very close, and a blind panic gripped all three hunters simultaneously. They scrambled, crawled, and grabbed their ways to the cave portal as quickly as possible, with Henry dragging the box of samples.
Boyceyer was first out into the fresh air and sunlight. He took a deep breath, and his legs stopped working. He keeled over in a heap at the entrance, and shortly thereafter Henry tripped over him and passed out cold. Dempsey emerged in a strangely talkative mood, babbling and making no sense at all. The boy, left sitting out under a tree, had quickly seen and heard enough. He leaped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction, down the mountain in free fall, bursting into the campsite winded and trying to explain what had happened up there, pointing. Eventually calming him down and extracting a coherent message, the men quickly assembled a rescue team and hurried to the site.
It is now clear that the hunters were suffering the classic symptoms of oxygen deprivation. When the rescuers arrived, Boyceyer and Dempsey were coming around, but Henry was enfeebled, dazed, and unable to hike out. The men decided to cut the hunting expedition short and take him home. On the way his condition deteriorated. Fearing the specter of a new form of plague, they took him to a hospital in Carthage, Missouri. The doctors had no idea what was ailing him. His symptoms were puzzling. Sores resembling burns broke out all over his body, and his legs seemed paralyzed. Bill Henry remained hospitalized for several weeks, and he had time to plan for extracting his fortune from the hole in the mountain.
When he had recovered enough to leave under his own power, he staggered back to the cave to stake out a claim and work his silver mine, but the person who actually owned the land on which the mountain stood did not share his optimism, and no mining agreement could be reached between the two men. The guy wouldn’t even come out and see the cave with its sparkling silver, just sitting there ready to be hauled away. Perhaps he knew more than he would admit about that mountain. He wanted no part of a mining venture, and he advised Bill Henry to find something else to do.
Exasperated and angry beyond words, Henry returned to the site and avalanched as much material as he could move into the portal, making a hole that had been hard to find impossible to see. He would come back later, once he had figured out some further strategy.