b'P ROVING THE P RINCIPLEband and a tiny screw in a pocket ciga- the reactor building with the men. All the SL-1 erected at Central. Theyrette lighter. They found radioactive of this evidence proved that the reactor rigged a special net on the boom of agold-198 and copper-64. Only neutron had gone critical. 24 crane and positioned it to prevent thecapture could have created such iso- body or anything else falling onto thetopes. Then they identified other fission The third man finally was found. His reactor. Metal workers shielded theproducts and several isotopes of urani- position directly above the reactor pre- crane operators cab. On January 9,um in the debris that had come out of sented a new hazard. Aside from the eight men, paired in two-man relaysobvious difficulty of working in a high limited to sixty-five seconds inside theradiation field at an awkward location, building, recovered the body and low-physicists feared that if pieces of debris ered it to the ground. 25near him fell onto or into the reactorthrough the open shield-plug holes, the The body joined the other two at thedisturbance might start a chain reaction. Chem Plant. Ateam of health physicsA photographer suited up and entered specialists and a forensic pathologistthe room for one minute, taking as from Los Alamos conducted autopsies,many photographs as possible. With the improvising with long-handled instru-help of the photos, a plan took shape ments and other procedures to keepfor the retrieval. Army volunteers from themselves safe. They hoped that thea special Chemical Radiological Unit at m e n s injuries might contribute someDugway Proving Ground wanted the insight into where they had been at thepractical experience offered by the moment of the accident and what mightchallenge of removing the body. The have caused it. Most urg e ntl y, they man-twenty-four enlisted men and five offi- aged to reduce the radiation fields ema-cers perfected a plan and rehearsed nating from each body to between onetheir moves on a full-scale mock-up of and ten percent of the original levels. 26 INEEL61-685The subject of burial already had beenquietly controversial within the topranks of IDO and AEC management.A.R. Luedecke, AEC general manager,had proposed that the men be buriedtogether somewhere on the NRTS siteand a monument erected in their memo-ry. Johnson and other IDO officialsobjected strenuously, feeling that themens families deserved the right toconduct funeral rites of their ownchoosing and as naturally as possible.Their view prevailed. The IDO orderedAbove. Recovery crews practiced at a mock-up, seenhere under construction, at Central Facilities Area.Left. Crew from Dugway Proving Ground. INEEL 61-6741 4 6'