Sandia Corporation (SC) 1090th Air Force Reporting Group 845lst Area Administrative Unit Task group units as noted Operations: moored buoys. Measurements of water pressures were taken from floati The installation of the mooring system and the servi ing of the clocks and batteries in the instrumented buoys required participation of the USS Gypsy, the USS Mender, the USS Cocopa, and the USS Tawakoni, as well as the support of a barge, several miscellaneous small boats, and swimmers. The gauges were self~recording except for some information telemetered to a PB4Y-2 aircraft (No. 59763) that was due south of the instrument array at a nominal dis- tance of 40 statute miles (64.4 km) and an altitude of 10,000 feet (3.05 km). Shots: BRAVO, ROMEO, UNION, YANKEE (Bikini); NECTAR (Enewetak). Radiation Exposure Potential: High. Recovery of the buoys throughd ut the series and, after BRAVO, the laying of the moors for the Bikini shots required ship operations in contaminated waters. As the shot were postponed by weather’, the buoys had to be hoisted and their cldcks and batteries serviced. The average time to lay the moor was 1% hodrs and the recovery required 1 hour. The buoys themselves were radiologically contaminated. In an eg- treme case of recovery (a buoy from the UNION event that contained film-type recorder and thus required early retrieval), the buoy's egfterior was reading 1.200 R/hr and the interior was reading 0.500 R ry as was the seawater. The project report states that between UNION and YANKEE the “am# bient radioactive level aboard [Cocopa] became higher than the perm Sible limit" and the work had to be completed by the Tawakoni. So Thik tion of the UNION crater, lodging in the seawater pipes. The same document reports that protective clothing was worn in handling the contaminated buoys and that the support ships were rotated to equal ze the expesure. 174 seemee re ree was a result of "radioactive silt," perhaps churned up in the forma 1