At the Nevada Test Site, these various collectors were placed on the ground or
on low platforms.
In the Pacific, various seaborne craft were also used for
the location of such samplers. Thus, one has used Liberty ships outfitted as
instrumented test vessels traversing fallout areas, instrumented landing craft
modified to operate in a fallout zone, and unmanned barges, anchored in the
path of prevailing winds.
Clouds were almost exclusively sampled by means of filter units mounted in
pods attached to aircraft.
The samplers, having a fixed geometry, were designed
to approach isokinetic conditions as much as possible, but deviations from
such conditions occurred as a result of variations in the altitude of sampling
(barometric pressure), air velocity (air speed of the sampling aircraft), and
ambient temperature.
Several designs have been used.
Originally the filters were ACC Type V (Army Chemical Corps), fabricated from
an asbestos base.
Dissolution of these filters was quite cumbersome, and
their impurity content was unsatisfactory. Hence, the transition was made to
cellulose-based IPC-1478 filter paper impregnated with "Kronisol" (di-butoxyethylphthalate).
The filtration and permeability characteristics of this
material have been investigated by several researchers (Inst. of Paper Chemistry,
1960; Stafford and Ettinger, 1970a, 1970b, 1971).
Exact duplication of field
sampling conditions tn the laboratory is very difficult, and most studies only
approximated field conditions. Diffusion ts the primary mechanism of particle
collection, particularly for the smaller-size particles.
For the larger
particles, the relationship between pore size and particle size dominates.
Thus, the efficiency is dependent upon the particle size.
For particles
larger than a few microns, the efficiency approaches 100%, decreases to about
20% at 10-2 - 10-! um, and may then increase again towards smaller particle
sizes. As a result, measured size distributions will usually be biased against
the smaller sizes.
Sticky wires were an important sampling method used in the Roller Coaster
project conducted at the Tonopah Test Range to simulate accidental explosions
of nuclear weapons under storage conditions. Arrays of wires coated with a
sticky substance were suspended in the anticipated path of the cloud from
tethered balloons (Traceriab, Division of LFE, 1966).
Collection occurred by
inertial impaction and clearly discriminated against the smaller particles.
Nevertheless, this method yielded estimates of the activity distributions in
the clouds projected on a vertical plane approximately perpendicular to the
wind direction.
In addition to the gross activity measurements on the wires,
the particles in the samples could also be further analyzed. On the other
hand, besides the limitations imposed by the collection efficiency of the
wires, the sticky-wire method for collecting cloud samples is limited in
altitude and by some lack of mobility of the system resulting in possible poor
cloud interception as a result of wind direction changes.
Turning now to the "miscellaneous" category, we mention the following:
High-volume samplers (hi-vols) were used primarily in the peripheral areas of
the test site and outside the test site mostly to determine atmospheric levels
of radioactivity for monitoring purposes.

Scoops were

(and are)

used

to sample soil

for subsequent analyses.

To be

mentioned here is the "Weasel," occasionally used in the fifties, being a
remotely operated M-29 tank equipped with a scoop.
Surface samples have also
been obtained by coring, to obtain depth profiles of radioactivity.
In recent years, special samplers have been designed and used by Anspaugh et
al,

(1974)

to determine resuspension on

the Nevada Test

Site.

These samplers

consist of a vertical array of collection tubes positioned at a slant and are
used passively.
Finally, radar has been used to obtain cloud profiles, particularly at early
times, and to estimate parcicle size distributions in clouds.

ANALYTICAL DATA

Since the inception of nuclear testing, a large number of properties has been
measured often on isolated debris particles,

but also on

integral

samples

consisting of debris, nonradioactive admixtures to the clouds such as soil,
and contaminants, usually windblown dust.
Detailed analyses have been performed
on samples from some selected tests, but some data are available from most
shots.
Limitations in the depth of the analyses were imposed by the large
requirements of manpower, equipment, and time.
Nevertheless, the detailed
work that has been done encompasses a wide range of yields and detonation
conditions.
Table 2 lists the number of tests for which various data are
available in greater or lesser detail.
Particle isolation was accomplished mostly by location of the individual
particles by autoradiographic techniques followed by micromanipulation.
These
particles were usually about 2 um or more in diameter.
However, not all
radioactive particles are identified, because autoradiography is limited by
some minimum level of activity for each length of exposure. The submicrometer
radioactive-particle population is not represented at all, and the remainder
of the population is only partially represented.
The properties that have been measured are listed in Table 3.
are further discussed below.

These measurements

PARTICLE SIZE DISTRIBUTION

Size distributions have been measured primarily to estimate debris transport
and for input into fallout models.
Together with radtoactivity data, they
are used to evaluate the hazards to the biosphere (including man) resulting
from local, intermediate, and worldwide fallout.
They have been determined by
means of optical or electron microscopy (or both) of integral samples and of

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