Albert Stevens

Albert Stevens
Albert Stevens
Born	1887
Died	January 9, 1966, age 79
Cause of death	cardiorespiratory failure
Resting place	Cremains in storage at Argonne National Laboratory and Washington State University
Nationality	American
Occupation	House painter
Known for	Surviving the highest known radiation dose in any human

Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1, was the victim of an unethical human radiation experiment, and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human. On May 14, 1945, he was injected with 131 kBq (3.55 µCi) of plutonium without his knowledge or informed consent.

Plutonium remained present in his body for the remainder of his life, the amount decaying slowly through radioactive decay and biological elimination. Stevens died of heart disease some 20 years later, having accumulated an effective radiation dose of 64 Sv (6400 rem) over that period. The current annual permitted dose for a radiation worker in the United States is 0.05 Sv (or 5 rem).

Plutonium was first synthesized in 1940 and isolated in 1941 by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley. Early research (pre-1944) was carried out on small samples manufactured using a cyclotron. The Manhattan Project built mass scale production facilities for the war effort. In November 1943, the X-10 Graphite Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory began producing significant amounts of the element, and industrial–scale production began in March 1945 with the commissioning of the B Reactor at the Hanford Site in Washington State. The plutonium produced by the B-reactor was earmarked for the implosion-type, plutonium cored nuclear weapons that were being developed as part of the Manhattan Project. Of the three nuclear weapons made during the war, two of them used plutonium as their fissile material.

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