America’s Most Dangerous Grave Resides Just Outside The Nation’s Capital

Spc. Richard Leroy McKinley’s white marble headstone may look like the others in Arlington Cemetery, but his grave serves as a grim reminder of the first fatal nuclear accident in America.

McKinley’s grave is the only radioactive grave in the cemetery. He was laid to rest in a double lead-lined casket and lowered into a 10-foot concrete grave encased in a metal vault with an additional foot of concrete poured atop his casket.

McKinley’s family had to watch the eight-minute veteran’s funeral from 20 feet away.

McKinley was born on December 2, 1933, in Union City, Indiana, but he grew up with his big family in Kenton, Ohio. McKinley enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1951 and served in Korea. He married his hometown sweetheart, Caroline Dick, on June 1, 1956, and they had two children together.

He later enlisted in the United States Army and began serving as an operator at the National Reactor Testing Station in 1961, just outside Idaho Falls, Idaho. Nuclear reactors were built and tested at this site, including an experimental design known as the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One (SL-1).

On January 3, 1961, operators came to work at the reactor station following a 10-day closure for the holidays. Around 9:00 p.m., the alarm rang out after a steam explosion erupted in the SL-1 reactor, killing Army Spc. John Arthur Byrnes and Navy Seabee Richard Carlton Legg.

When first responders arrived an hour and a half later at 10:35 p.m., they found the two men dead on the ground, as well as McKinley, who had miraculously survived the initial explosion. They also encountered dangerously high levels of radiation and rushed McKinley to the hospital.

McKinley tragically died at just 27 years old shortly after being placed in the ambulance, leaving behind his wife and two children.

McKinley’s grave is now safe to visit; it remains the only radioactive burial plot in the cemetery, and his cemetery file reads with a grim warning.

“Victim of nuclear accident,” the file reads. “Body is contaminated with long-life radioactive isotopes. Under no circumstances will the body be removed from this location without prior approval of the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] in consultation with this headquarters.”

Thank you…That was a very civil post you made on an area where we obviously disagree. I have thought long and hard about this particular portion of history from 1941 to about 1955, and if you see my Freep Page and posting history, you can see that my opinions about communism and Senator Joseph McCarthy run counter to what all of us were taught in school, read books, and heard on the news.

This is relevant, because back then (more accurately from 1918 to probably 1945) many people who dabbled in communism in their younger years (as Oppenheimer clearly did) may have been viewed more by society in general as a youthful dalliance that people could and did grow out of once they got out of college. In reality, from about 1930 to 1955, communism was a serious threat inside our country. Things like the Venona decryptions, show just how serious the Soviets were about, penetrating our government, and did so successfully.

That is why, as it relates to Oppenheimer, I don’t think it is insignificant.

I will concede that the revocation of Oppenheimer‘s security clearance in the lead up to the H bomb development was more grudge-based and political. I personally don’t view Oppenheimer as any kind of American hero. But with his talent, I do see that he did service to this country at a time when we needed it.

He very obviously had communist sympathies in certain ways, that can’t be denied given the people that he associated with.

And I always found this sentiment that you see among people, and that people like Oppenheimer and Einstein expressed after the fact that they had reservations about developing a weapon like this it’s all rubbish in my opinion. A source I very much trust for honesty, Richard Feynman said that there was none of that. He said that everybody was doing a job to reach a goal, and there was very little sentiment about the concept that what they were doing was wrong.

Again, I am willing to concede that after they saw the Trinity explosion they may have changed their minds. Who, in their right mind would not have reservations after seeing something that incredibly awesome that had never been seen by mankind before, would not have reservations? But that was, for the most part,after the fact, not during the development.

I find something very irritating about that mindset, and it reeks to me of ex post facto justification.

You can probably tell that I am not someone who regrets that we used nuclear weapons against the Japanese empire. I don’t like that we did, but I don’t regret that we did.

But I am not a believer in revisionist history, judging things that were done at a point in history and applying today, standards to them. (I want to stress that I am not implying that you do that, there was nothing in your post that indicated that is your mindset, this is just something that I think about often)

The incredible butchery that took place in the Pacific war against the Japanese, a very atavistic , no-holds-barred war that demonstrated a degree of brutality that was largely unmatched in many other theaters of that war, probably only approached by the German and Soviet armies on the eastern front. I have many disagreements with the presidency of Harry Truman, but the decision on his part is nuclear weapons against Japan is not one of them.

The fact is, I am glad that we developed nuclear weapons first. And it is an oddly mixed positive outcome that we used them on Japan, because if we hadn’t, I fully suspect that another country would’ve used nuclear weapons at some point in later history.

The fact that we used them on Japan showed the entire world in unequivocal terms what nuclear weapons on a population Center could do, and that deterred not only us in the United States, but other countries as well I believe.

I view the development of nuclear weapons in much the same light as I view the pursuit of artificial intelligence. Our country has its faults, but I would much rather see a country like ours develop and be a leader in the use of artificial intelligence than a country like communist, China.

Like nuclear weapons…ifwe didn’t develop them, someone else would, at the very least I feel that we have a foundation of moral underpinnings (even with all of our faults)that tyrannical governments like communist China simply don’t have. I would rather that the leadership and development be attributed to the United States, and not to a country like communist China.

Again, thank you for your civil response to my original post. I will consider reading the book you recommended. I will say that I am not disposed to change my opinions on Oppenheimer given my impression that many modern works I have read about Oppenheimer come across as apologeas, attempts to rehabilitate him,and given the state of the world today, I’m generally not receptive to them. I view Oppenheimer as a leftist, and although it’s possible he may have been better and more accurately described, even with all of his education and intelligence, as a useful idiot rather than a “card-carrying-communist“, it is clear to me that he subscribed to many of the underlying leftist philosophies that we see today, and those are things that I wholly reject root and branch.

I feel that I can say this, and also at the same time agree that the grudges that people held against him. (such as grudges by people like Edward Teller for one) were unfair or unjust.

However, on your recommendation, I will consider reading it.

I think in today’s political atmosphere Oppenheimer would be embraced by the democrat party. In my view, politically he would be akin to the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other hard core leftists who are not card carrying communists.

Oppenheimer was undoubtedly progressive, he grew up a child of privilege in Manhattan, of extreme intelligence and educational attainment. Yes, in California of the 1920s until he decamped to Los Alamos, he fit in well at UCLA, Stanford and Cal Tech. Leftism was the way of life in those institutions, as it remains today. But to my knowledge no evidence has shown Oppenheimer to be a card carrying comrade.

Thank you for the wonderful exposition in your response to my message. I appreciate the education as you are much more knowledgeable in this arena than I.

I will volunteer you would like American Prometheus. It’s deeply annotated with as I recall more than 500 footnotes and citations. According to the authors, it took 25 years to research, compile and synthesize the materials into a coherent book. It was fun for me to read about the actual scientists who I learned about in graduate courses on quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, and undergraduate courses in physics.

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