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STANDARD FORM NO. 64
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Office Memorandum e UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
TO
:
FROM
:
J.C. Bugher, Director, Division of
Biology and Medicine, Washington
DATE: December 1, 1952
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W. E. Kelley, Manager,
New York Operations Office
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"nermonmrans METEOROLOGICAL PROGRAM
SYMBOL:
sELV:ib
The meteorological program which has been conducted at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory for the past several years has been directed
primarily toward maintaining the present off-site radiation level
agreed upon by Brookhaven and the Commission. If, as currently proposed, the operating tolerance level is raised by a factor of 10,
there will be essentially no chance that the off-site dose rate will
ever be exceeded as a result of reactor operations at current maximum
power levels. Consequently, it will be no longer necessary to con-
tinue meteorological work at Brookhaven on anything like the present
scale for monitoring purposes alone.
In view of these facts, the Laboratory is faced with the necessity of
terminating the meteorology program and abandoning the facilities at,
or shortly after, the end of the current fiscal year.
The facilities
consist of a remodeled wood frame building, valued at $66,8)0, pro-
viding 6000 sq.ft. of space for offices and housingof teletype machines
and weather recording equipment.
Erected in the vicinity of this
building are two steel towers 160 ft. and 20 ft. in height, valued
at $311,000. The scientific equipment in the control building along
with the meteorological instruments and smoke generator unit mounted
on the towers are valued at $61,000. They are now operated by a staff
of 10 Brookhaven employees and 2 representatives of the U. S. Weather
Bureau.
Abandonment of the program would reduce the equipment
pod
substantially to scrap value,
The research work on the fundamentals of smoke diffusion which has
come from this laboratory is among the outstanding work which has
been accomplished in the United States in the past several years.
To my knowledge, the laboratory affords the only location where continuous unclassified research on these problems is being carried out.
A coordination of the work of the Brookhaven Meteorology Laboratory
with that being done on the New York University Wind Tunnel Project
will make possible an evaluation of wind tunnel scale factors and
open the way to laboratory diagnosis of atmospheric pollution problems.
The Brookhaven facilities are being duplicated in miniature for the
New York University Wind Tunnel so that identical atmospheric conditions can be transferred and studied directly.
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