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stratosphere at which the rate of injection of radioactive bomb debris will
be equal to the decay plus deposition rate,

A concensus reached at the

1957 Congressional Committee hearings on fallout placed the permissible
rate of testing at 2-10 MT

per year (Reference 24),

The validity of such

numbers depends in large part on the reliability of experimental determinations of the fraction ef the weapon appearing in global fallout,

This fraction has usually been estimated indirectly by measuring
the fallout in the local area and subtraction from unity,

The methods used

for the determination of local fallout have involved measurement of gamma
ray field contours or representative sampling of the material arriving at
the surface of the earth (References 25 and 26).

The total amount of radio-

active debris in the fallout area may be calculated if the relation between
dose rate and surface density of radioactive material is known,

Similarly,

samples representing a known area of the fallout field may be analyzed for
amount of weapon debris and all such areas summed to give the total local
fatlout,

A combination of fallout sampling and analysis plus gammaradia-

tion measurements has also been used (Reference 26),
These procedures are subject to a number of difficulties and uncertainties » not only with regard to making adequate sample collections
and radiation field measurements, but also in data interpretation,

The es-

tablishment of accurate gamma contours requires an extensive and costly
24

a

SAN BRENG FRE

,

at

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