-14 that the general model of fallout set forth is consistent
with the data and essentially correct.
III.

PLANS

It is clear that the peoples of the world are
‘extremely interested in radioactive fallout because of
the bearing that the new phenomenology of the nuclear
age has on everyone's life. For this reason, we must
understand radioactive fallout in all its intricacies.
It is to be hoped that the study will be a cooperative,
international one. The United Nations Scientific
Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation offers an

ideal forum for the discussion and consideration of
the problem. From these deliberations will come
further suggestions, ideas, appraisals and statement
of the problem. The methods developed in this
country for measurement and all the data collected

are available to everyone. It is our hope and intention that this problem, like others of the atomic
age, will come to be generally understood. —
Fallout is normally considered an aspect of
atomic warfare and nuclear armament. There is somesimilarity, however, between the weapons fallout and
the hazard from a reactor accident, in which radio-

active products would be disseminated over a limited
area, but never reach the stratosphere or undergo anything like the world-wide tropospheric dissemination.

As it has sc often been observed in the past, so it is
again true in this instance, that a new fact of nature
is likely to have its beneficent as well as its somber
and frightening aspects. As we learn about the way

the world-wide fallout particle, probably as tiny as

a virus molecule, wends its way from the stratosphere —
through the tropopause into the troposphere and,
within a few weeks, collides with a water droplet and
thus is brought to the earth's surface by rain, we
shall learn more about the circulation of the atmosphere, about the way in which rain is formed, and
about the questions which will naturally arise more

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