“Estimation of Dosage Reveived by Personnel of USS PATAPSCO (A0G-1) following

the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE.
A. - Introduction

Problem:

In response to the Navy Nuclear Test Personnel Review office request

(ref. 1) the following analysis of personnel exposures was undertaken.

During

a transit of the USS PATAPSCO from Eniwetok Atoll to Pear] Harbor Hawaii, the

personnel of the PATAPSCO encountered an unknown amount of radioactive fallout

that resulted from the Castle-Bravo shot (ref. 1).

The captain of the ship had

been alerted to the possibility of radioactive material contaminating the ship
and so made attempts to measure the radioactivity but because of inadequate
equipment only uncertain readings were obtained (ref. 2).

When PATAPSCO arrived

at Pearl Harbor the ship and personnel were monitored and the ship was found
‘ .o have been contaminated (ref. 2).

The following analysis will provide esti-

mates of the range of possible external gamma radiation doses received by the
crew from this fallout.

Approach:

Two primary sources of radiation data for dose estimation are used

in this analysis:

(1) published unit reference (H+1) dose rate contours

(ref. 3) and, (2) radiological survey data obtained on arrival at Pear? Harbor.
Extrapolations of these data are then utilized to estimate the range of dose
-variations caused by environmental conditions, exposures situations and times.

Valuable information contained in the PATAPSCO captains recollections (ref. 2),
the

ship's logs (ref. 4) and notes describing the survey and decontamination

‘procedures employed at Pear] Harbor (ref. 4) was used in the preparation of
this analysis.

The time interval for the dose estimates undertaken here will

2 form fallout arrival at the ship to the time of crew evacuation as reported

Enclosure (1)

Select target paragraph3