Overdose of tragedy

For those of you interested in the various scales that quantify major disasters, we have a new entry for you: The International Nuclear Events Scale. The INES is an eight-point (0 to 7) numeric scale developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency for communicating the level of danger represented by a nuclear accident, designed so international authorities can comprehend and respond to the threat quickly, appropriately, and effectively.

This is not the oft-misquoted list of buzzwords such as Bent Spear and Broken Arrow that show up in oh-so-many Hollywood movies, though such terms do have some basis in reality. Those are code phrases used by the U.S. military to describe incidents involving nuclear weaponry, while the INES is a civilian system used to describe events involving non-weaponized nuclear systems and materials.

Put another way, Broken Arrow refers to a missing nuclear bomb. INES Level 7 refers to a nuclear reactor meltdown.

An INES Level 0 event represents absolutely no danger to anyone or anything, but it was at least enough of a hiccup that the incident observer felt it worth reporting to international authorities. Think of it as the nuclear equivalent of the Check Engine light in your car.

In contrast, the poster child for an INES Level 7 event -- and the only example of the worst possible INES rating -- is the Chernobyl disaster, rated by most authorities as the most lethal and dangerous nuclear event in human history, short of those that actually involved nuclear weapons.

This is not to say that the Chernobyl disaster released the greatest volume or intensity of radiation ever to result from a nuclear accident. The lethality of the Chernobyl accident is largely attributable to the fact that it released radioactive fallout into open air.

Winds then carried that fallout over a devastatingly large area. This wind-borne fallout exposed millions of innocent bystanders to increased cancer risks, and it rendered an entire city uninhabitable for the next few thousand years.

Still, the highest dose any single individual received from the Chernobyl disaster was an estimated 1,600 rems -- definitively lethal but far from the record dose suffered by a human accident victim.

WHAT HUMAN BEING SUFFERED THE HIGHEST ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR RADIATION EXPOSURE IN HISTORY?

On Dec. 30, 1958, technician Cecil Kelley was hard at work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico using chemical reagents to purify plutonium isotopes. In a tragic sequence of events, Kelley inadvertently created a brief nuclear criticality in one of the purification vats, leading to a radiation burst that dosed him with a staggering 12,000 rems — more than seven times the highest dose suffered by any victim of the Chernobyl disaster.

The cause of the accident was deceptively simple: There was simply more Plutonium-239 isotope in the reagent vat than anyone suspected. When Kelley activated the vat’s automated stirring mechanism, it brought sufficient amounts of Pu-239 together to create a short-lived nuclear reaction.

The vat went up like a flashbulb, blasting Kelley with an intense burst of nuclear radiation — an estimated 900 rad from fast neutrons and 2,700 rad from gamma rays — the highest recorded accidental human exposure in history.

(As a measure of scale, the 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki exposed some victims to monumentally higher dosages than Kelley, with some estimates placing dosages in the range of 200,000 rems. The explosive effects of the bombs, however, make accurate assessments of the dosages almost impossible.)

Kelley began suffering classic symptoms of acute radiation poisoning instantly, and he died 35 hours after exposure. Without resorting to graphic details, it’s sufficient to say that Kelley’s body exhibited some of the most extreme examples of symptoms ever witnessed by physicians.

Dozens of scientists around the country received samples of Kelley’s tissue. Those samples became some of the most infamous specimens in a controversial human tissue analysis project that examined the effects of radiation on more than 1,500 subjects over the course of several years.

Kelley’s case remains one of the landmark medical examples of the effects of radiation exposure — something to keep in the annals of nuclear research, and medical science.

For those of you interested in the various scales that quantify major disasters, we have a new entry for you: The International Nuclear Events Scale. The INES is an eight-point (0 to 7) numeric scale developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency for communicating the level of danger represented by a nuclear accident, designed so international authorities can comprehend and respond to the threat quickly, appropriately, and effectively.

This is not the oft-misquoted list of buzzwords such as Bent Spear and Broken Arrow that show up in oh-so-many Hollywood movies, though such terms do have some basis in reality. Those are code phrases used by the U.S. military to describe incidents involving nuclear weaponry, while the INES is a civilian system used to describe events involving non-weaponized nuclear systems and materials.

Put another way, Broken Arrow refers to a missing nuclear bomb. INES Level 7 refers to a nuclear reactor meltdown.

An INES Level 0 event represents absolutely no danger to anyone or anything, but it was at least enough of a hiccup that the incident observer felt it worth reporting to international authorities. Think of it as the nuclear equivalent of the Check Engine light in your car.

In contrast, the poster child for an INES Level 7 event -- and the only example of the worst possible INES rating -- is the Chernobyl disaster, rated by most authorities as the most lethal and dangerous nuclear event in human history, short of those that actually involved nuclear weapons.

This is not to say that the Chernobyl disaster released the greatest volume or intensity of radiation ever to result from a nuclear accident. The lethality of the Chernobyl accident is largely attributable to the fact that it released radioactive fallout into open air.

Winds then carried that fallout over a devastatingly large area. This wind-borne fallout exposed millions of innocent bystanders to increased cancer risks, and it rendered an entire city uninhabitable for the next few thousand years.

Still, the highest dose any single individual received from the Chernobyl disaster was an estimated 1,600 rems -- definitively lethal but far from the record dose suffered by a human accident victim.

Magnitude 9.5, Category 5, F5 - these terms can strike fear in the heart of anyone with access to a cable news network, as each is shorthand for a highly destructive natural disaster. While politicians and reporters often describe earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes as inflicting immeasurable loss and incalculable damage, the job of actually quantifying the "unquantifiable" falls to scientists.


Category 5

As measured by the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, this term describes the most high-powered class of tropical cyclones. Scientists developed the Saffir-Simpson Scale to predict the potential for wind and flood damage posed by hurricanes. As such, wind speed and the height of the storm-surge waves created by hurricanes are the determining factors for each level on the scale.

A Category 5 hurricane has maximum sustained wind speeds in excess of 155 miles per hour and storm-surge wave heights of 18 feet or greater. That's more than twice the wind speed and triple the surge height necessary for a storm to simply qualify as a hurricane.

F5

This term represents the realistic pinnacle of the Fujita Scale, which estimates tornado intensity and wind speeds based on observed damage after the disaster. The estimation is necessary because tornadoes destroy pretty much any instrument that could actually gauge their active speed. An F5 tornado boasts wind speeds of 261 to 318 miles per hour, capable of erasing anything short of a steel-reinforced concrete bunker.

Magnitude 9.5

This measurement represents a nightmare level on the Richter Magnitude Scale, which measures the seismic energy released by an earthquake. The Richter Scale is logarithmic, meaning that a magnitude 2.0 quake releases ten times as much energy as a magnitude 1.0 (and, while not directly logarithmic, does 30 times the damage on average).

Moreover, the scale accounts for a massive amount of energy. For example, a magnitude 4.0 quake has roughly the same energy output as a small nuclear weapon.

In that context, the famous 1906 San Francisco earthquake's 8.0 rating is appropriately terrifying. And, in case you were wondering, the Richter Scale does go above 10, but a 12.0 quake would represent enough force to shear the entire planet in half.

Yet, for all the destructive power measured by the Fujita, Saffir-Simpson, and Richter scales, they pale in comparison to the potential disasters tracked by the Torino Impact Hazard Scale.

WHAT TYPE OF THREAT DOES THE TORINO IMPACT HAZARD SCALE MEASURE?

What type of threat does the Torino Impact Hazard Scale measure - a breed of natural disaster arguably more dangerous than tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes combined?

The Torino Scale measures the danger posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs) namely asteroids and comets. It ranks every known rock in the sky based on the likelihood of its intersecting with the Earth's orbit and, if it does cross terra firma's path, how widespread that impact's destruction would be.

The Torino Scale rates these threats from zero to 10. Zero represents an object that almost certainly won't impact Earth, and 10 represents a "global killer" rock that not only will strike Earth, but could threaten to destroy the entirety of human civilization.

Still think you're better off worrying about the next thunderstorm predicted to cross your town's path? Then consider this: Level 10 Torino threats occur regularly in the geologic record, with an average frequency of one strike every 100,000 years.

The notion is scary, but not overly so and that's by design. In fact, scientist Richard P. Binzel created the Torino Scale in 1999 as a public relations tool for laymen and journalists, who often misinterpret press releases about potential long-term asteroid impacts as announcements that the sky is falling.

But for hard-core NEO scholars, only the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale will do. This scale represents the likelihood of an NEO impact as compared to the "background" threat of the average space rock. The rather esoteric Palermo Scale identifies NEOs that bear further scrutiny, in order to refine their orbital trajectories and determine if and when they'll collide with Earth.

Yes, there's a lot of derivative calculus involved, all of which yields mere probabilities of impact, which the home audience can easily take out of context to mean potential Armageddon. The Torino Scale is, for lack of a better description, a "dumbed-down" Palermo Scale, with more easily conveyed threat levels - perfect for the evening news.


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