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