Hisashi Ouchi lost most of his skin and began bleeding blood after a fatal accident at Japan’s Tokaimura nuclear power facility in 1999. Doctors were taken aback when Hisashi Ouchi arrived at the University of Tokyo Hospital after being exposed to the most significant dose of radiation ever recorded in a human. The 35-year-old nuclear power plant technician had nearly no white blood cells, implying that he lacked an immune system. He’d soon be crying blood as his flesh melted.
On September 30, 1999, just before noon, a nuclear accident occurred at Japan’s Tokaimura nuclear power facility. The Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Co (JCO) directed Ouchi and two other workers to mix a new batch of fuel despite an appalling lack of safety safeguards and many deadly shortcuts.
However, the three guys were inexperienced in the procedure and had to combine their supplies by hand. Then they unintentionally put seven times the quantity of uranium into the wrong tank. As Gamma rays invaded the room, Ouchi stood immediately above the vessel. While the authorities evacuated the facility and surrounding communities, Ouchi’s suffering had just begun.
Hisashi Ouchi, kept in a special radiation ward to protect him from hospital-borne infections, bled and wailed for his mother. He frequently collapsed from heart attacks, only to be resurrected at the behest of his family. His only chance of survival would be the last heart arrest 83 days later.
Hisashi Ouchi and Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant
Hisashi Ouchi, born in Japan in 1965, began working in the nuclear energy business at a critical juncture in his country’s history. With scarce natural resources and a high reliance on imported energy, Japan had resorted to nuclear power generation, constructing its first commercial nuclear power plant only four years before its birth.
Because of the ample area in Tokaimura, the power plant location was appropriate, and it led to a large campus of nuclear reactors, research institutions, fuel enrichment, and disposal facilities. Eventually, one-third of the city’s population would depend on the rapidly expanding atomic industry in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo.
On March 11, 1997, locals watched in terror as an explosion at the nuclear reactor shook Tokaimura. Dozens of individuals were irradiated before the authorities attempted a cover-up to conceal carelessness. However, another incident would overshadow the evidence of the significance of that event two years later.
For nuclear energy purposes, the facility transformed uranium hexafluoride into enriched uranium. They often accomplish this with a multi-step method combining numerous parts in a precisely timed sequence.
Officials began testing in 1999 to see if bypassing any of those procedures may speed up the process. However, it had forced them to fail a fuel-generation deadline of September 28. So, on September 30, at 10 a.m., Hisashi Ouchi, his 29-year-old colleague Masato Shinohara, and their 54-year-old boss Yutaka Yokokawa attempted a shortcut.
But they had no idea what they were doing. Instead of utilizing mechanical pumps to combine 5.3 pounds of enriched uranium with nitric acid in a specified tank, they poured 35 pounds into steel buckets by hand. That uranium hit critical mass at 10:35 a.m. The chamber burst with a blue flare, confirming that a nuclear chain reaction had occurred, generating fatal radiation emissions.
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Hisashi Ouchi: The Most Radioactive Man in History
Hisashi Ouchi and his coworkers were evacuated from the factory and transferred to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. They were all physically exposed to the radiation, but they were all affected to varying degrees due to their proximity to the fuel.
More than seven sieverts of radiation are deemed lethal. Yutaka Yokokawa, the group’s supervisor, was exposed to three and would be the only one to survive. Masato Shinohara was exposed to 10 sieverts, while Hisashi Ouchi was exposed to 17 sieverts while standing directly above the steel bucket.
Ouchi had been exposed to the most significant radiation that any human has ever been exposed to. He was in excruciating discomfort and could hardly breathe. He had already vomited profusely and fallen unconscious when he arrived at the hospital. Hisashi Ouchi had radiation burns all over his body, and his eyes were bleeding.
His lack of white blood cells and lack of an immunological response. Doctors admitted him to a particular unit to avoid infection and determine the extent of his internal organ damage. He was sent to the University of Tokyo Hospital three days later, where they would test innovative stem cell treatments.
During Ouchi’s first week in critical care, he had many skin grafts and blood transfusions. Hisamura Hirai, a cell transplant specialist, proposed a groundbreaking procedure we had never tested on radiation sufferers before stem cell transplants. These would restore Ouchi’s capacity to make fresh blood quickly.
This method would be significantly faster than bone marrow transplants since Ouchi’s sister would donate her stem cells. Surprisingly, the procedure worked before Ouchi returned to his near-death state.
Hisashi Ouchi’s chromosomes are annihilated in photographs. The radiation running through his blood eliminated the inserted cells. And photos of Hisashi Ouchi demonstrate that the skin transplants failed because his DNA could not reconstruct itself.
What Happen after Tokaimura Disaster
Following the Tokaimura nuclear disaster, authorities instructed 310,000 people within six miles of the Tokai plant to remain inside for 24 hours. Over the next ten days, 10,000 persons were tested for radiation, with over 600 suffering from low levels. Hisashi Ouchi and his colleague Masato Shinohara suffered the most.
Shinohara fought for his life for seven months. He has had blood stem cell transfusions as well. In his case, physicians extracted them from a newborn’s umbilical cord. Unfortunately, neither that method nor skin transplants, blood transfusions, or cancer therapies had been successful. On April 27, 2000, he died of lung and liver failure.
Yokokawa, the supervisor of the two deceased workers, was released from the hospital after three months of therapy. He had lived despite moderate radiation illness. In October 2000, however, he was charged with negligence. Meanwhile, JCO has agreed to pay $121 million to resolve 6,875 compensation claims from impacted residents.
For more than a decade, the nuclear power station in Tokai operated under a separate business until it shut down automatically following the 2011 Thoku earthquake and tsunami. It has not been used since.
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