(ar
specs and how much of the
no matter what care goes into the writing of instrument
this unpleasant fact remains:
taxpayers! money is spent on an instrument stockpile
workers in a badly
the evaluation of a hazard and the supervision of emergency
contaminated area require highly trained personnel.
services
Offsetting the fact that a serious contamination will require the
contamination
of skilled personnel with elaborate equipment is the fact that such
of a
would exist, if at all, in only a small region - by far the greater part
tely
county (or any subdivision of comparable size) subject to attack would be comple
free of radiation hazard.
In fact, except for an underwater burst, which might
contaminate say ten square miles, one would expect that well over nine tenths of
the territory coming under one civil defense jurisdiction would be completely free
of radioactivity.
Even in the case of an underwater burst the clean area is many
times larger than the contaminated since the average size of the 92 largest cities
The difficulty lies in the fact that
in the United States is 53.8 square miles.
an instrumental survey is needed to determine that a locality is clean - the
situation is quite different from that of a fire or other catastrophy, the location
of which is obvious.
The whole civil defense radiological problem falls in two parts:
(a) to
establish as quickly as possible which areas are clean, and (b) to cope with whatever special conditions exist in those areas found to be contaminated.
The first
part is in many respects the more important since it will probably affect by far
the greatest number in their daily lives.
Fortunately it requires only simple
instrumentation and comparatively unskilled personnel to determine that there is
no significant radioactivity in a locality, if we have mainly to consider "fall-out"
from an air burst or base surge contamination from an underwater (or underground)
burst.
It is possible to imagine, of course, situatiom in radiological warfare
where a region showing less than 10 mr/hr on a "gamma only" meter might be unhealthy
for long occupancy because of alpha contamination.
But this sort of situation
-~2-
- Doe ARCHIVES