Attachment 4 Harold F. Plank to Alvin C. Graves, Colonel Kieffer's Proposal for the Decontamination of Sampling Aircraft Alvin C. Graves 24 April 1957 Harold F. Plank Col. Kieffer's Proposal for the Decontamination of Sampling Aircraft 1. At Col. Kieffer's request, I talked with him at some length on April 19th about his proposal. He remarked that he had heard that his proposal had not been well received, that, specifically, I had strong objection to it, and that Gen. Canterbury desired that he find out from me what our objections were. During my discussion with Col. Kieffer, it became obvious from the tumor of his remarks, not only that the decontamination problem was under fire, but that he also found repugnant the other precautionary measures instituted by Karl Houghton and myself to promote the management and control of the obvious hazards associated with sampling operations. It was abundantly clear that he felt strongly that those measures should be changed to conform to the tactical policy which Pinson is attempting to establish in the Air Force at large for exactly the reasons stated in his letter of 21 March. An additional goal, according to Kieffer, was that he hoped he would bring industrial concerns such as Convair to a realistic understanding of contamination problems and cause them to abandon their present adherence to ridiculously low contamination levels. He made the point, for example, that aircraft crossing the country can at present be contaminated to a level that exceeds existing industrial standards. 2. The following is a partial list of precautionary measures which have been evolved as necessary by Houghton or myself to control and to minimize the contamination of instruments, film badges, and people, and so to facilitate the control of the radiation exposures of the participants. a. The use of filters in the pressurization system of the sampling aircraft to eliminate external contamination of the persons, clothing and personal equipment, and the film badges of the aircrews. b. The use of "nominal thickness" lead equivalent shielded flight jackets or vests, to absorb the law energy photon flux in the bomb cloud. c. The use of duplicate film badges which are placed in standard positions on the sampling aircrews to eliminate spurious processing or reading errors. d. Rigorous measures to assure that the accounting far and handling of these badges is as "clean" as possible so that the right people are assigned the exposure and so that the exposure is what was experienced on the mission and not from contamination on badge's surfaces. e. The use of a platform supported by a forklift to remove flight personnel from sampling aircraft after lending to prevent aircrews from contaminating their persons, their clothing, or their film badges. f. The routine decontamination and cleaning (including the removal of grease and traffic films) of the sampling aircraft after they land to allow maintenance to proceed and our instrument and sample support technicians to start work as soon as possible, and to prevent increase in the relative cockpit background intensity. 1 3. From reports from various people at AFSWC, I understand that Pinson has objected to most of the above precautions, particularly those that are counter to practices which he would like to have USAF units follow in the testical situation. Kieffer, in fact, mentioned that one of the most embarrassing things to them was that observers would see the forklift being need while Pinson was trying to tell them that there was no hazard. I was, in fact, surprised by the ILLEGIBLE with which he objected to the use of the forklift and his lack of acceptance of the view that for the test situation the forklift was an inexpensive worthwhile precaution. I'm reasonably sure that, with the exception of the forklift, Pinson has qualified his objections when he has discussed them with operational personnel like Kieffer. Unfortunately, operational people tend to see things in terms of black and white, and it is apparent that they have over-simplified his views. Finally, I found that Kieffer simply could not understand the philosophy which regards every radiation exposure as injurious but accepts minimum exposures for critical jobs. 4. The view of the constant supervisory effort which in my experience is required to control the radiation exposures of the personnel concerned even with the above precautions, I find Kieffer's approach to be extremely discouraging. I would like to recommend that he be informed of the following facts of life: a. That the aircraft are assigned to support our requirement for bomb cloud sampling and would not otherwise be participating in test operations. b. That there would appear to be no reason why their use in sampling should be required to support some Air Force objective, particularly when it is clear that the two purposes are not compatible. c. That the AEC Test Manager supports a philosophy of minimal exposures for critical jobs within limits established by competent scientific authority. d. That all of the precautions have been found to be necessary for the operational management and accurate technical control of the radiation exposures of the people concerned. e. That our experiences indicates that the discard of any of the present precautions is a movement back toward our SANDSTONE experience in which people were injured, and that this experience covers eight operations in which the sampling mission was accomplished by the USAF in an outstanding manner with no known injuries. f. That, specifically, routine decontamination of sampling aircraft is required to permit the instrumentation and sample support technicians to work on and in the aircraft, to prevent the build-up of long-lived activity, and increases in the relative background acquired by the airplane an cloud penetration from an otherwise increasingly sticky traffic film. HAROLD F. PLANK DISTRIBUTION: 2 - A.C. Graves 1 - W. Ogle 1 - B. Kennedy 1 - Maj G. Jacks 1 - H. Plank 2