More background details on the military and civil defense
participation are given in Section Five.
Small to large groups of Congressmen and other public offi-

cials have attended many detonations in all Nevada series. A

group of NATO observers witnessed the May 5, 1955, shot.
Costsof Nevada Tests

_ Exact costs of Nevada test operations, even aside from the
cost of fissionable materials expended, have not been segregated
and probably cannot be. It was estimated that the cost of the

originally-scheduled ten shots in the Spring 1953 series would be
about. $15,000,000 for the AEC and about $15,000,000 for the DOD,
or approximately $3,000,000 a shot. This still may be a fairly
rough estimate.

Postponements

In the five series, there were approximately 103 postponements or delays. More than 80were caused by unacceptable weather.
Other causes included: aircraft engine failure, one; construction,
one; delays in instrumentation, three; aircraft operations, two;
contamination of firing areas by previous shots, two; one shot was
prevented from detonating by a built-in checking device when a key

experiment was not receiving data; another did not detonate because

of failure in an electrical connection, A majority of postponements
for weather were day by day, but when air drops were involved the
initial postponement was usually 48 hours.
Operating Controls

Controls and procedures to prevent hazard to on-site participants or to the off-site public have been successful. Only one
person, a test participant, has been injured seriously as a result

of the 45 detonations. Outside the Test Site, there has been no
instance of hazardous exposure of human beings to radiation from

faliout, and no injury from blast waves or the flash of light.
There were instances of property damage, such as broken windows,
from blast in the Lag Vegas area and in St. George ~- mainly confined to earlier series.
Cattle and horses grazing within a few
miles of the detonation suffered skin deep beta radiation burns on

their hides (1952 and 1953 series), with no effect on their breeding value and no effect on the cattle's beef quality. Radiation
fallout more than a few miles from the detonation has been in
quantities harmless to humans, animals or crops.

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