United Nuclear: A Meltdown Traditional Cache
StromNova: Archiving - cannot keep update
United Nuclear: A Meltdown
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Small Medicine bottle placed at an old United Nuclear facility in Wood River Junction, RI. This cache was placed to inform people of this significant event in history and it's location, as well as a homage to the fatal accident.
Yes, it's true; the only fatal nuclear accident in a U.S. commercial facility happened in a small little town in Rhode Island. Story as follows:
On 23 July 1964, a criticality accident occurred at the Wood River Junction facility in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island. The plant was designed to recover uranium from scrap material left over from fuel element production. On July 24 the operator was pouring what he thought was diluted uranium solution into a mechanical mixer when he saw a blue flash. An operator accidentally dropped a concentrated uranium solution into an agitated tank containing sodium carbonate, resulting in a critical nuclear reaction.
The solution was far more concentrated than he thought, and the mixer too big for safety; so much uranium was now in one container it reached critical mass and reacted, knocking him to the floor, splashing him with radioactive liquid. This criticality exposed the operator to a fatal radiation dose of 10,000 rad (100 Gy). Ninety minutes later a second excursion happened when a plant manager returned to the building and turned off the agitator, exposing himself and another administrator to doses of up to 100 rad (1 Gy) without ill effect.
The processing plant has been demolished, and is now just a road leading to a flat patch of land. As a word of caution, I would advise not licking any of the surround rocks due to radiation safety purposes! (kidding!). The area has been deemed safe and is fully decontaminated. The cache is located next to a gate placed at the entrance to the road that leads to the site. The entrance to the cache is off of Kings Factory Road.
Congratulations to "Going to Carolina" and "Satellite Girl" for FTF!!!!!!1!!!!!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Hc va n gerr vf jurer V or!
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures