react when dissolved in saturated, hot water vapor. The area of the reaction disk produced,
easily measured with a microscope, is proportional to the amount of NaCl present (Reference

33). The values of NaCl masslisted in Table 3.12 were obtained by this method; the values of

H,O mass were obtained by constructing a calibration curve relating the volume of water in the
particle at the time of impact to the area of its initial impression, usually well defined by the
insoluble solids trace (Figure 3.28).

Because the water content of slurry fallout varies with

atmospheric conditions at the time of deposition, mass is expressed in terms of the amount of
NaCl present; the weight of water may be estimated by multiplying the NaCl mass by 1.2, the
average observed factor.
Conventional X-ray diffraction methods were used for qualitative analysis of the insoluble

solids, stripped from the reagent film by means of an acrylic spray coating, and they were

found to consist of calcium iron oxide (2 CaO-Fe,0,), oxides of calcium and iron, and various
other compounds (Table 3.13). Some of these were also observed by electron diffraction.

Radiochemical Characteristics.
Thirteen of the most-active slurry particles
removed from the SIC trays in the YAG 40 laboratory during Shot Flathead were combined (Reference 26), and analyzed radiochemically in much the same way asthe solid particles described
earlier in Section 3.3.1. The sample was assayed in the gamma well counter (WC) and the 4-7

gamma ionization chamber (GIC), then analyzed for Mo”, Ba'°-La°, sr®® and Np**: tctal

fissions, activity ratios, R-values and the product/fission ratio were computed as before. The
results are presented in Table 3.14.

It may be seen that the product/fission ratio and R**(89) value are comparable with the values

obtained for gross fallout samples (Tables 3.17, 3.18, and 3.21), and that the overall radionuclide

composition resembles that of the unaltered solid particles. Slight depletion of both Ba‘?-La!4?
and Sr*®® is indicated.
Activity Relationships.

Since the mass of slurry-particle fallout was expressed in

terms of-NaCl mass, it was decided to attempt to express activity relationships in the same
terms. This was accomplished in two steps. First, the H+12-hours well-counter activities
measured on the IC trays from the majority of the stations listed in Table 3.12 were summed

to arrive at the total amounts of activity deposited per unit area (counts per minute per square
foot). These values were then divided by the average specific activity calculated for each station (counts per minute per microgram NaCl) to obtain the total amount of NaCl mass deposited
per unit area (micrograms NaCl per square foot). Results for Shot Flathead are plotted in Fig-

ure 3.30, and numerical] values for both shots are tabulated in Table B.11; the Navajo results

were not plotted because of insufficient data. (Figure 3.30 and Table B.11 have been corrected
for recently discovered errors in the tray activity summations reported in Reference 31. )
While this curve may be uSed to estimate the amount of activity associated with a given
amount of slurry-fallout mass in outlying areas, it must be rememberedthat the curve is based
on average specific activity. It should also be noted that the unusually high values of NaCl mass

obtained for the YFNB 29 during Shot Flathead have not been plotted. A correspondingly high
value for the YFNB 13 during Shot Navajo appears in the table. These were felt to reflect dif-

ferences in composition which are not yet well understood.
A preliminary effort was also made to determine the way in which the activity of slurry particles was divided between the soluble and insoluble phases. As illustrated in Figure 3.31,
radioautographs of chloride reaction areas on reagent films from all of the Flathead collections

and a few of the Navajo shipboard collections indicated that the majority of the activity was associated with the insoluble solids. This result was apparently confirmed when it was found that
84 percent of the total activity was removable by physical stripping of the insoluble solids; however, more careful later studies (private communication from N. H. Farlow, NRDL) designed
to establish the amountof activity in solids that could not be stripped from the film, and the

amount of dissolved activity in gelatin removed with the strip coating, decreased this value to
65 percent. It must be noted that the stripping process was applied to a Flathead sample from
the YAG 40 only, and that solubility experiments on OCC collections from other locations at

Shot Navajo (Reference 32) indicated the partition of soluble-insoluble activity may vary with
collector location or time of arrival. The latter experiments, performed in duplicate, yielded

54

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