Atomic Man

August 30, 1976 – On this day, Harold McCluskey became known as the “Atomic Man.” The 65-year-old technician at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington was using a glove box to add chemicals in the extraction of americium-241, a radioactive by-product of plutonium used in smoke detectors.

Something went terribly wrong. A tank exploded, blasting McCluskey with shards of glass and enveloping him in a cloud of radioactive particles that dosed him with more than 500 times the occupational exposure limit.

He was quickly whisked into a decontamination facility, where he would spend the next five months in isolation, undergoing chelation therapy to help flush the radioactive material from his body.

By 1977 his radiation levels had dropped by 80%, and McCluskey was allowed to go home. At first he was shunned by neighbors who feared contamination, until his minister assured them he was safe to be around.

Remarkably, McCluskey went on to make a full recovery and lived another 11 years before dying of heart disease unrelated to the accident. When asked about his legacy, he was characteristically modest: he just wanted to be remembered as a man who “kept doing his job.”