EVALUATION OF FALLOUT CONTAMINATION FROM SURFACE RUNOFF
1966
Grune, Werner N. | Atlas, Henry S. | Hamel, Gerard J.
Research sponsored in part by Office of Civil Defense, Wash. DC.
Show more [+] Less [-]Previous studies of water supply contamination from fallout due to nuclear attack indicated that the level of activity brought into a water supply by surface runoff increases the activity considerably. These studies employed a constant value for the 'runoff-coefficient' to obtain estimates of the degree of contamination resulting from the soluble fraction of fallout. This report summarizes known relationships between rainfall and the amount of activity that reaches the water supply due to surface runoff and is concerned mainly with the hydrology of surface runoff and ion exchange phenomena. Data on ion exchange properties of soils with respect to the biologically important radionuclides are given. Further, the report includes a consideration of the general problem of transport of activity, a discussion of uptake of activity by biota and preliminary calculations of water supply contamination for Providence, R. I., one of the cities in the OCD '5-City Study'. Maximum levels of selected contaminants at the Providence water intake from a 30 MT attack indicate that the water supply contamination level may be increased by a factor of 10 to 25 when surface runoff from the watershed is considered.
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