Government property and equipment; and labor and service assistance to the AEC
and scientific parties (1).
Additional functions were incorporated into the contract during subsequent years.
In July 1955, the company assumed responsibility from the
military for "radiological safety services" at the test site.
It maintained
this responsibility throughout the remaining period of atmospheric nuclear
weapons testing (1).
As early as 1957, REECo began receiving requests for dosimetry infor-
mation and collecting all records indicating personnel exposures to ionizing
radiation during the atmospheric nuclear tests.
This quickly developed into a
major effort, resulting in a substantial number of records concerning
individual film badge issues, cumulations of badges for an individual for a
given series, contemporaneous summations of the badge data, some of the badges
themselves, and a collection of other documents pertinent to personnel
dosimetry.
In 1966, REECo received funding from DNA to automate the assembled
information on radiation doses.
From 1967 to 1969, five keypunch operators
transferred approximately 400,000 records to 80-column punched cards, organized by continental and oceanic testing and according to year.
Of these
records, more than 232,000 were for the atmospheric testing period 1945
through 1962.
By 1971, the records had been placed on rolls of 35-millimeter
microfilm, and by 1974 on 16-millimeter microfilm cassettes and microfiche.
In addition, REECo microfilmed 400 boxes of source documents for the dosimetry
records.
These documents, like the dose records, were organized chrono-
logically, according to continental and oceanic test series, and were placed
on 16-millimeter microfilm cassettes.
In 1978, DOE and DNA began funding
REECo for a dosimetry project to establish a data base of all atmospheric
nuclear testing records.
records,
The data base now comprises about 1.6 million
including underground testing records.
Of these, approximately
387,000 are dose records for DOD and AEC participants in atmospheric nuclear
testing (2).
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