Wood River Junction, Rhode Island is a small village located in the town of Richmond

Richmond, Rhode Island

Richmond is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 7,708 at the 2010 census. The villages of Alton, Arcadia, Carolina, Hope Valley, Kenyon, Shannock, Usquepaug, Woodville, and Wyoming are located in Richmond.-History:The town of Richmond was originally part...

. It is home to the Chariho school district's main campus and is otherwise largely turf farms

Sod

Sod or turf is grass and the part of the soil beneath it held together by the roots, or a piece of thin material.The term sod may be used to mean turf grown and cut specifically for the establishment of lawns...

. The village is the site of the former Wood River Branch Railroad Station. The Wood River Branch of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was chartered in 1872 and completed in 1874. On April 19, 1873 a train disaster was caused by a bridge washout and burning of passenger cars.. The Branch was built to provide service from the Hope Valley to the main line of the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad and was only six miles long. The New Haven Railroad took over operation of the Branch in 1892 and the railroad was abandoned on August 8, 1947.

Wood River Junction is commonly considered by locals to be one of the coldest locations in the state of Rhode Island, due to its low lying and flat geography. It is the home of Meadowbrook Pond, also known as Wood River Pond, a popular fishing and swimming area. It is surrounded by two rivers: The Wood River and Pawcatuck River

Pawcatuck River

The Pawcatuck River is a river in the U.S. states of Rhode Island and Connecticut flowing approximately . There are eight dams along the river's length. The former USS Pawcatuck was named after the river.-History:...

.

On 23 July 1964, a criticality accident

Criticality accident

A criticality accident, sometimes referred to as an excursion or a power excursion, is an accidental increase of nuclear chain reactions in a fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium...

occurred at the Wood River Junction nuclear facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island. The plant was designed to recover uranium from scrap material left over from fuel element production. An operator was pouring what he thought was diluted uranium solution into a mechanical mixer when he saw a blue flash.
The solution was far more concentrated than he thought, and the mixer not big enough for safety; too 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).Four minutes later, he was vomiting, with severe stomach cramps, a headache, and no control of his bodily functions, according to a medical report. Coworkers wrapped him in blankets and he was rushed to a hospital. There, he grew worse quickly: his chest and arms swelled and his gold wedding band had to be sawed off, over his objections

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.