ters against fallout. This is a program coordinated with the Federal Civil Defense Administration and its contractors, the National Bureau of Standards and the University of California.

The scientific responsibility or leadership will be with our Oak Ridge operations office. The objectives include the use of artificial sources to simulate a fallout field and make a radiological survey of typical residences in such environment and then attempt to improvise simple expedients or means for improving the shielding provided to occupants in a house or in a shelter location in the house.

In addition to those mentioned, we have two others. One is civil effects project 58-3, which is a continuing study on shielding and dosimetry as related to the data collected by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in our efforts to decrease the error in dose received by survivors of the weapons detonated in 1945 in Japan. The other, civil effects project 58-3-incidentally, these last two came in too late to be included in the statement I made

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Will you go into detail on the rest of your statement there? It would appear to me to be important enough to be gone into from point four on down, including these inserts.

Mr. CORSBIE. 58-3 is an investigation of thermal effects on the interior of shelters.

Now, coming then to the last part of the statement, Plumbbob, I will cover it very rapidly.

This was the program in 1957. It comprised 10 programs, 54 projects, and about 250 shot-participations. The Federal Civil Defense Administration requested that 4 of the 9 programs be assigned to them.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Give us the rest of this as it is written, will you please, Mr. Corsbie? Will you follow through on that? I think it is something we may want to look at very carefully and if you skip over it as you have the rest, we will not get it.

Mr. CORSBIE. All right, sir.

The program was under the direction of Dr. Gerald Johnson, Scientific Test Director, Atomic Energy Commission, Operation Plumbbob. This group of tests comprised 10 programs, 54 projects, and about 250 shot participations.

The field organization over the several months operation period uses for varying periods of time a peak population of about 400 medical doctors, physicists, veterinarians, biologists, chemists, architects, engineers, and other specialists including staff personnel.

It is recognized that the need for information useful to individual, community, and national self-protection parallels the development of nuclear weapons and the utilization of nuclear energy. The scientific and technical content and the objectives of the Civil Effects Test Group is determined by this urgent need for up-to-date information on the effects given by a family of nuclear weapons and any possible effects from the peacetime applications of atomic energy.

It is recognized that we are already well into the atomic age. Learning to live with the byproducts of nuclear reactions is necessary and urgent. We need to know on a continuing basis about the ways in which blast, heat, radiation, light, and radioactive fallout affect people, food, drink, houses, suburban communities, and rural villages, services, utilities, and transportation.

Probably the most significant aspect of the civil effects Test program, Operation Plumbbob, was the coordination of continuing laboratory research and less frequent test activities in planning projects to provide information essential to an adequate understanding of nuclear effects on life in all its phases.

Our weapons development tests afford an opportunity to augment laboratory experiments with new and useful knowledge from nuclear detonations. Continental tests afford unusually good opportunities to verify in the field various theoretical concepts and laboratory programs which are directed toward complete knowledge of effects on

man.

The coupling of the laboratory and full-scale test activities provide a continuous flow of basic data usable in immediate practical applications and in planning future research into the means of national selfprotection, individual survival and accommodation of medical practice to the atomic era.

At the briefing of this committee in April 1957 in Washington, at the Nevada test site in August 1957 and a special briefing and tour of NTS by the chairman in December 1957, you were informed of the program. At that time the content of the CETG Plumbbob program was separated into the following categories: (1) fallout radiation, (2) prompt-gamma and prompt-neutron radiation, (3) blast effects on structures, (4) blast biology studies, (5) radiological countermeasures and training, and (6) instrumentation and supporting

services.

It is our understanding that the present hearings are concerned principally with the state of knowledge on shelter and related matter. As background to testimony which will be provided by CETG Program and Project Director and others on details of shelters and tests, I desire to give a short summary of background work in Nevada and in the laboratory which leads to the Plumbbob investigations.

In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Civil Defense Administration tested a number of shelters. At that time the nominal, or 20-kiloton weapon, associated with World War II was accepted as the energy release of principal interest. To obtain basic information on components usable in shelters we tested a prototype underground shelter built of 7 feet 6 inches inside diameter, concrete pipe, and corrugated metal pipe of the same size to compare the cost and response of the two materials.

In selecting the materials, we were influenced by the advantages of utilizing materials commercially available from coast to coast, from the gulf to Canada, and which could be erected rapidly with conventional tools and nonspecialized labor. The shelter has been exposed to a number of detonations, several of which gave overpressures higher than those from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations at ground

zero.

The shelter survived physically but the results directed our attention principally toward the question of acceptable shelter environ

ment.

At the same time the Federal Civil Defense Administration tested a variety of some 28 home shelters under a series of detonations without repair to structures between shots. The information obtained was useful in the preparation of guides and pamphlets for use of homeowners to provide a shelter within or near their homes.

Although measurements of blast radiation and thermal effects were somewhat primitive in comparison to the more advanced instrumentation that we have today, useful information was gained.

The Buster-Jangle results of the 1951 series were used to improve the design and construction of shelters to provide protection against radiation and thermal effects and to resist physically the overloading

of the blast.

In 1953 additional shelters were tested, using the structural crosssections or components which had successfully resisted the blast loadings of the 1951 exposures. These shelters were more refined in design, and structural configurations were developed for entrances to act as blast traps or blast absorbers. The shelters were underground with at least 3 feet of cover and were constructed of a reinforced concrete entrance with precast concrete and corrugated metal pipe shelter body. They provided basic data for later designs.

For these tests, animals were used to investigate the biological effects of blast and also the biological effects of ionizing radiation.

Much of our data on biological material came from this experiment in investigating the effects of overpressures and underpressures. As in 1951, the Federal Civil Defense Administration tested improved models of family shelters including the basement lean-to types designed principally to protect against collapsing overhead structures. Also reinforced concrete and masonry structures designed to be built outside of houses with or without mounded earth cover and some buried sufficiently deep for the cover to remain at grade were included. Considerable information was gained on the physical resistance of materials and combinations of materials to static and dynamic pressure phenomena, but more was gained concerning the importance of the shelter environment and its relation to biological acceptability.

Following the Upshot-Knothole series of 1953, the problem was returned to the laboratory and through the utilization of high explosives, low charges and high charges, shock tubes and wind tunnels produced new designs for testing under still higher pressures and more severe combinations of effects.

These investigations provided the criteria for the design of shelters included in the civil effects test program in Operation Teapot in 1955. We tested a variety of shelters and structures principally sponsored by the Federal Civil Defense Administration.

The AEC directed its principal attention toward investigating the biological environment of the interiors. FCDA shelters were designed and successfully tested under overpressures of the order of 100 pounds per square inch. Some of the shelters had open doors, some closed. In addition to the heavy reinforced concrete shelters tested under high overpressures, a variety of family-type shelters was tested at lower pressures out to about 2 pounds per square inch. Some of these were in basements; some were garden types intended for dual use and designed to give more protection than would be available to a person in the average house, especially those without basement. Others were designed to give a high degree of protection under overpressures of the order of 20 to 30 pounds per square inch.

In some of the shelters, animals were recovered from collapsed houses-friendly, and wagging their tails. This evidence of survival,

backed up by pressure, thermal and radiation measurements gave additional information for use in drawing a finer bead on structural aspects and biological acceptability of shelter environments.

This brings us to the shelters, structures and components in Operation Plumbbob. For the continuing investigations of biological effects of overpressures associated with blast biology we used principally shelters which were constructed and tested in 1955.

To satisfy the ever increasing urgency for information concerning the behavior and response of engineering designs and materials under blast loadings new types of design have come from the drafting rooms including recognition of the importance of the dual use of structures for protection against blast and other nuclear effects. Others will cover in detail the scope, magnitude and results of the Plumbbob shelter tests, including physical damage, biomedical aspects, blast biology, and radiological tests.

In conclusion of these introductory remarks, let me add that every effort is being made to place the information obtained from this group of scientific and technical tests in the hands of Civil Defense, industry and the public at the earliest possible time.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Corsbie.

Now, can you give us a little more accurate account of timing than you do in this last paragraph here?

Just what has been done in the way of giving this information to Civil Defense, industry and the public, and what is planned and how long will it take you to accomplish this?

Mr. CORSBIE. As a policy, the Civil Effects Test Group tries to write unclassified reports. This policy was adopted in 1955 and we found that more than 50 percent of our reports could be written unclassified.

In Operation Plumbbob there were approximately 57 projects. At present we have printed and distributed 17. We have in review 11. We have 29 of them forthcoming.

Of those that have been distributed, there are only 2 classified, 3 are "official use only" and 12 are unclassified.

Of these I would like to say that six of them are for sale through the Office of Technical Services. We have given to you here one of our unclassified reports. It is on the test of the radiological shelter, CETG project 32.3. We would expect the remaining reports will be through the editorial processing within 45 days.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The Chair would encourage you to make every effort to declassify everything it is possible to declassify. In my opinion the strict policy of classification will not be in the interests of the American people.

Sometimes some of the people who deal with these subjects are prone to become a little bit overcautious and when it comes to weapon effects on structures and things like that which are of great importance to the American people, in my opinion there are ways and means by which most of this material can be made available without revealing the particular peculiarities of the weapon used. Pressure in pounds per square inch and the resistance of these buildings can be given and so forth.

Many of these things can be declassified. I hope in the producing of your reports you will keep that in mind.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. What do you do with your classified material? Mr. CORSBIE. The classified material is distributed to those on the distribution list, including the Department of Defense, Civil Defense, and other agencies who make a request or who would have access to these reports.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Do you notify them or do they have to find out about it?

Mr. CORSBIE. Each agency is polled early in an operation for a distribution list. When the reports are printed at Oak Ridge, the Technical Information Services extension, they already have a distribution list, which provides for routine distribution.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Who has the responsibility for determining which should be classified and which should be unclassified?

Mr. CORSBIE. It is the test classification officer in the case of an operation. There is one person who is designated to pass on matters associated with classification and our reports are passed through this person with the request for as much guidance as he can give us. If it is determined that any part of the report is classified, we attempt through changes of language or otherwise to produce an unclassified report. Mr. LIPSCOMB. Would FCDA have available to them all classified material, or is there still another classification?

Mr. CORSBIE. They would have all classified test material except as it deals with weapons design and components.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. You said 50 percent of the material was unclassified, which would leave 50 percent classified. Would FCDA have an opportunity to look at all that 50 percent that was classified?

Mr. CORSBIE. All except a very small part that would be in the category of weapons design, and not weapons effects.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. It would not be necessary for them to know how a weapon was designed if you gave to them the intensity of the radiation which occurred and the blast and the heat readings. From the standpoint of their function, this would cover the essential information which they would need, would it not?

Mr. CORSBIE. Yes, sir, and in further explanation, to make sure this point is clear. Weapons effects information-although some are classified, such as the effectiveness of the yield of a weapon, the ranges of radiation, and some of the measurements of radiation-is routinely transmitted to the Federal Civil Defense Administration. Also since FCDA participates jointly with us in operations, they are familiar with much of the data and much information is obtained by them in their own programs.

The only information not transmitted are weapons design, components, the amount of material in the weapon and the actual configuration of the weapon.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. In your opinion, the release of the diameter of the circle of radiation of specific degree of intensity and relating it to, say a 20-ton weapon, would that be considered classified?

Mr. CORSBIE. No, sir. That is presently in the effects of nuclear weapons. The scaling laws for various yields are given, as to the range of radiation, the range of blast.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. This would give to the FCDA the basic information to prepare shelters or other types of protective programs for specific situations and conditions, notwithstanding the fact that you