RMI Nuclear Justice Documents

Effects Experiments
All the CASTLE shots tested new weapon developments.
time and space and go or

Prioritied of

no-go considerations favored the weapon deYelop-

ment experiments over the effects experiments.

Although the effectg

ex-

periments were clearly secondary, they directly involved a relatively
large number of DOD organizations and individuals and are therefore fof
prime importance for this report.

In fact, the total support requi

for the effects experiments were 60 percent of the total support re
ment (Reference 4, p.

57).

The effects experiments were intended to acquire urgently neede@

mili-

tary data that could not be obtained from the smaller yield tests ag

the

Nevada Proving Ground

These

(NPG),

now called the Nevada Test Site

experiments may be classed into two general kinds.

(NTS).§

The first classfof

measurements was made to document the hostile environment created
nuclear detonation.

the

The second class of effects experiments documehhted

the response of systems

to the hostile environment;

these measurements are

termed systems response experiments.
ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS.

The purpose of environmental measurements

was to gain a comprehensive view of the hostile environment created

by a

nuclear detonation to allow military planners to design survivable

[mili-

tary hardware and systems and train personnel to survive.

of

environmental measurements include static

(crushing)

Exampleq

and dynamic

(Mlast

wind) air pressures in the blast wave, heat generated by the detondtion,
and fallout radiation.

The measurement techniques employed for CASTLE

varied with the effect being measured, but usually measuring devicds or
gauges were placed at a variety of ranges from ground zero and thejgr measurement recorded in some way.
techniques was used.

A wide variety of gauges and data r@cording

In some cases, measurements were similar to

being made by the weapon designers,

fhose

but at greater distances or logger

after the detonation, which simplified the recording of the data,

&lthough

the recovery problems were by no means trivial.

35

Hf