the lagoon proved to be dangerous to personnel. Salt spray and water
made maintenance of electrical equivment on the rafts difficult.
Both electrical and moving mechanical parts corroded quickly.
Only a
minority of project personnel were able to work at the raft stations
without becoming seasick. Only two of the original nine raft stations
sampled successfully during Shot 1. All raft instrumentation recoverable after Shot 1 was removed from the rafts and used at land stations.
Since no samples were obtained from predicted base surge region
of any CASTLE shot, none of the desired information about the charac=
teristics and significance: of the radioactive debris distributed by
base surge phenomena was obtainsde
2e7
RECOVERY AND SHIPMENT OF SAMPLES
Recovery was carried out on the fourth, fifth, and ninth day
after Shot 1, the first day after Shot 2, the first and second day
after Shots 3 and 4, and the first day after Shot 6.
A two-man team
used a 10-passenger helicopter to recover samples from the land
stations.
A second two-man team used an LCM to recover samples from
the raft stations after Shot 1. The recovery teams removed the
spider assemblies from the IFC's, placed them in dust-tight boxes,
and moved them to the packing area,
All locations available for packaging samples were somewhat
windy and usually in contaminated areas. Packing was done on an open
barge near Nan after Shot 1, in a Tare tent after Shot 2, ina Nan
tent after Shot 3, on Oboe, in the rear of a closed truck turned on
its side after Shot 4, and in a tent at Elmer after Shot 6.
The jars
were removed from the trays and capped. The trays were surveyed
where possible, and a few samples selected for decay measurements at
the Project 2.6b Elmer laboratory.
Plastic "snap-on" caps were put on
the glass cups, and the trays were sealed with aluminum foil. The
trays and jars were returned to Army Chemical Center, Maryland by a
special sample return plane which usually left Eniwetok one or two
days after recovery was completede
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