CONFIDENTIAL
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
OBJECTIVES
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The objectives of Project 6.5 were:
a.
To determine the relative contaminability of widely used
building construction materials exposed to the type of wet contaminant
fallout which, it is believed, would result from nuclear detonations
in harbors.
.
b. To evaluate the effectiveness of various practical decontamination techniques, particularly readily available methods, and to
estimate the practicability of such techniques in the tactical amd
industrial recovery of military installations.
;
c. To evaluate the relative effectiveness of simple protective
measures such as painting of surfaces and sealing cf joints, in
reducing the contaminability and/or facilitating the decontamination
of such surfaces,
a.
To ascertain the effect of slope on the contamination
retentivity of surfaces.
:
e. To evaluate the effectiveness of pre-attack surface washdown
countermeasures in reducing the contamina*ion of surfaces,
1.2
BACKGROUND
The contaminating effects of Shot Baker at Operation CROSSROADS
demonstrated that the wet contamination resulting from a shallow
underwater detonation of an atomic weapon, such as in a harbor, would
present a serious and complex problem of decontamination of ships as
well as of buildirg structures of nearby shore installations. This
trend has also been indicated in subsequent laboratory studies
conducted at the Army Chemical Center and the United States Naval
Radiological Defense Laboratory.
However, with the exception of
Operation JANGLE, which produced a dry particulate contamination, all
subsequent field tests were conducted under essentially noncontamie
nating conditions. No contamination-decontamination studies were
conduct:-d at Operation IVY where the first thermonuclear device was
detonated. Operation CASTLE provided the much needed opportunity to
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