__ -·------· __ UNITED STATl' 5 GOVEllN Memorandu April 19 1968 Files THRU TO raOlf John R Totter Director d Division of Biology and ine H D Bruner M D •• Assistant Di CJOJ fO · fil Medical and Health Research p Z J • Division of Biology and Medicine CONFERENCE WITH DANISH REPRESENTATIVES IN PENTAGON MAllCH 18-19 9 TO FOLLOW UP ON BROKEN AlUlOW CRESTED ICE PROJECT THULE BASE GREENLAND IUB J CT JANUARY - 107038 21 1968 ADMHR HDB The official list of participants is given on Attachment I A number of people on Dr Walske's staff participated at one time or another Mr Hans Koch and Dr Walske shared the chair as they did at Copenhagen everything moved effortlesslJ with a great deal of cordiality Mr Koch indicated that the Danish government had appointed the following committee with himself as chairman to coordinate all efforts to evalu• ate the situation at Thule and undertake whatever further measures are considered necessary LH Koch Chairman J ICoch _H Lassen absent H L Gj rup C F Jacobsen and E J Henningsen 1 The memo of understanding signed by Mr Koch therefore has an official connotation • ---- --- - '- '- - t the first session on March 18 General Hunziker Dr Gj rup and 0- ij Langham reported on progress in the cleanup and on data obtained ince the Copenhagen meeting this time last month With the advent of daylight General Hunziker has been able to put large numbers of men on 1 r4 of metal The weather has held good and now the ice is considered to have been satisfactorily cleared of metal He was also able to get v oderately heavy road equipment onto the ice to scrape up the heavily contaminated area defined by LRL's Fidler meters corresponding in general to the 500 x 200·0 foot blackened-streak and roughly the southern half of the cracked ice •rea 'the scrapings about 230 000 cubic feet have been transported to the shote and stored in 65 empty steel tanks material is still frozen ri his a i is he blackened area no longer -discernable Surface surveys Jf est hat possibly 10 to 100 gallons of JP-4 fuel and 350 grams of Pu are sjstill left in the ice If 30t of this Pu remains suspended within the fJP-4 layer something like 100 grams of Pu might eventually spread on the shoreline however if agitation breaks down SOX of the emulsion then perhaps only 20 grams would reach the shore In any case General Hunziker proposes to patrol the shores for meta pieces of the tJ yU S S Files - 2 - April 19 1968 airplane oil and contamination While he considers his work largely to be completed there are still incomplete aspects such as work by the Geodetic survey current measurements in the bay it is about three miles hour on the bottom beneath the crash point storing the collected snow and ice under controlled conditions arranging for eventual transport of all contamination to the u s etc Some 186 cores have been taken from the ice according to a specific pattern which concentrated on the black streak and the cracked ice area The radioactivity is associated with the carbon-oil layer although some black areas have distinctly lower levels of Pu than others Since layers of activity are found at odd angles and positions in the vertical cores from the cracked area it is reasoned that the ice in this area must have been fractured blocks upended and hurled about whereupon they froze again in odd angles and positions As of March 1 83% of the total Pu on the ice as estimated from contour lines defined by the Fidler met@r had been removed if only the black streak area and the southern half of the cracked lee area are considered then about 93% has been removed The point is that the jumble of lee blocks in the northern half of the cracked ice area has prevented use of the scraper equipment Not all the contamination is on the surface of the lee in this area but no JP-4 or Pu has been found on the parts of the ice cores in contact with the sea water The highest le els on the meiers observed in the earliest surveys were in the range of 450 to 500 mg m the highest residual value now is about 200 mg m2 with most being 5 mg m2 or less Dr Gj rup collected 121 samples of snow or earth from selected points downwind of the impact and fire column and from the adjacent coast lines or islands where birds or seals might be found See map on file and 2 data His values range from zero to 3 8 pgm m2 with an average of 0 4 vs m • The total cumulative amount of Pu for the ice surfaces surrounding black streak and impact comes to about 10 curies the highest concentrations were found on the south shore near Narss rsuk If there had been people at Narssarsuk the maximal inhaled amo t of Pu would have been about 0 05 fC per person _ DOE ARCHJVj Other samples collected up to 10 to 15 km downwind from the streak to the west in the direction of the open water in Baffin Strait showed very low amounts of Pu this activity could be the result of drifting snow·· or the dispersion created by the fire column but the former mechanism seems more likely These Pu levels however are close to those resulting from deposition from weapons tests Langham has analyzed only 20 snow samples but his data agree with Gj rup's Both find a tendency for higher levels to be on Saunders Island They agree within a factor of 10 they considered this to be very good in view of the statistics of sample collection r o Files - 3 - April 19 1968 Gj rup found only trace amounts of Pu 1 5 pCi gm in sea water collected from 9 points along the bottom eee map on file Two showed positive values 0 0016 and 0 00016 fgm liter but contamination is suepected Snails and sea worms from the bottom were negative for Pu and plankton showed trace amounts A sledge dog used on the ice and killed in a fight had 0 001 pCi gm in the liver and 0 3 pCi total activity in its feces the lung had none Two foxes showed l pCi and 100 pCi respectively in the total gut contents but nothing in the lungs Fitzpatrick reported that the nasal swabs and urines of men working on the ice were negative for Pu Langham then described his reconstruction of what must have taken place as the plane came in His concept was based on the ice cores mentioned above and on infrared and other kinds of photographs reprocessed to get maximum contrast Theee made it evident that the cracked ice area is circular and about 650 feet in diameter The northern half has a much more uneven surface as a result of ice blocks frozen into various odd positions This cracked ice area did not seem to be 650 feet in diameter when 1 walked over it in all directions because only th above blocks of ice about 150 feet in diameter could be identified as abnormal by a man on foot But the photographs brought out clearly the concentric circular fracture lines that must have refrozen very quickly There is also clear photographic evidence of a linear streak crossing0 this cracked area and Langham postulated that if the plane came in at a 15 tangent to the ice with the left wing tip 60° from the horizontal he then could account for the pattern of break-up and scattering of fuel and engine parts just prior to the contact of the nose with the ice that set off the high explosive in the weapons · The high explosive of the weapons detonated beneath the main fuel tanks and hence the amount of fuel in the center of the cracked ice area is minimal The very high explosive force of the weapons would account for the reticular arrangement of fracture lines and distorted ice blocks He also postulated that one weapon exploded first and its shock wave then set off the other three It-seems ikely that the explosion disintegrated the Pu and alloy and surrounded as 't hey were by fuel tanks etc this metal ought to be impacted on and int the surfaces of one side of many but not all pieces of wreckage metal this is what was found DOE ARCHIV The JP-4 fuel seems to have played a special role in the distribution of the Pu First it seems to have provided a filter or catchment for Pu that otherwise did not impact onto some other surface Second the burning fuel was the means of dispersal-dilution of Pu over a fairly large number of square kilometers beyond the immediate area of the crash Probably 7f1'1 of the fuel burned And _finally the remaining unburned fuel by virtue of its surface tension properties has continued to influence the distribution of the Pu and other debris By its coating action the fuel has caused helped Pu to adhere to bits of metal rubber nylon Files - 4 - April 19 1968 plastic fiberglass carbon etc These do adhere to one another and they probably minimized the distribution of the Pu over the surface of the ice Where sufficient residual carbon mixed with this debris there resulted the black streak or scar without the carbon a slightly discolored unnatural crinkly sort of ice formed in this -150 to -400 cold When such areas are removed by scraping or by cores and allowed to melt the JP-4 floats to the surface bringing with it the above small bits of stuff and most of the Pu It is not a true emulsifying agent because shaking will cause much of the stuff to settle out especially the larcer bits But in general the fuel does tend to segregate the Pu really Pu02 away from the water In general 70 to 75i of the Pu will settle out after a time Track counts by autoradiography of the fines recovered from this semi-emulsion gave mean diameters for the Pu particles of 2 1 with range of 0 1 p to 100 p The Danes had also done this and they were very pleased to have arrived at the same numbers Some pieces of the wreck ace with adherent Pu lost about SO'X of their Pu when merely dunked in sea water· two or three times For the most part however the curve of removal resembled a Langmuir isotherm Eighty percent was released from aluminum after some 40 hours in sea water agitated gently so as to simulate wave motion only 30'X was released from steel surfaces in 40 hours The gradual but steady release of Pu assures that high concentrations will not develop locally from metal that may get into the bay and that the metal will eventually be no hazard Langham then gave some estimates which the Danes carefully noted translated into the units they use and aareed to with evident pleasure 1 On the basis of cores there are 300 to 350 gms of Pu 1 9 to 2 1 curies in the cracked ice area mostly in its central parts Now that the streak and southern part of the area has been scraped the residuum is in the northern half o f the circle where the tumbled blocks are Danis·h estim te was 320 grams 2 On the basis of cores and the Fidler meter there were CHIVES about 3190 gms 200 curies of Pu inside the blackened area all but l'Z 31 arams 2 curies h·a s been removed The Danes had estimated 16 00 crams but agreed with our ficures and further said the residuum was a negligible amount They indicated they would be happy with this residuum if they could be sure there were no small local very hot spots left on the ice The accuracy of the above figures depends on the calibration of the Fidler meter and the contour lines · It was agreed that the figure of 3180 20% 3700 to 2500 gms is reasonable _ bOE R Files - 5 - 3 April 19 1968 These numbers fall short of the theoretical amount of Pu in the four weapons Where is the rest Some must be on the airplane metal now being packaged for shipment to the United States for burial There will be no attempt to recover this Some has been spread far and wide by the fire column and or wind-drifted snow Some may have gotten into the bay at the time of explosion either directly or by attachment to pieces of plane which sank to the bottom Some has been recovered directly It appears unlikely that we shall ever get a precise inventory Mr Olson Lawrence Radiation Laboratory said he had melted some cores in garbage cans at Thule He found that 301 of the Pu floats but this reduces to about 1si with time However the fraction which floats is proportional to the amount of gunk and carbon present The Danes agreed Mr Gj rup Danish Atomic Energy Commission as ied abov§ has made extensive samplings of cores snow and earth for Pu and H He rep rted that if a sample from -the crushed area had no Pu it lso had no H Where the ice had a clean hard surface there was no H-- the vast majority of the 3a has been taken away by the clean-up procedure 0 The concentration in the streak area after clean-up was in the range of 10-5 Ci cc He estimated that there may have been 3000 Ci of le in the black streak and 10 Ci in the cracked area Possibly 330 Ci are left on the ice LThe MPC for lH for industrifl work§rs over a 40 h ur week is 0 03 uCi cc of water this equal§ JxlO Ci km and 0 03 Ci m Use a value of one-thirtieth of 0 03 Ci m for intake of tritium in water by the general opulation over the 68 hour week One gram lH •9 8xl03 Ci aad r ·Ci of H • 1 02xlo-4 grams d There ·was general agreement on our side that Gjorup's figures for 3 a were reasonable l OE ARCHIVES He then presented and discussed the data which he had developed from snow samples collected on the shore on the islands and on wide traverses away from the strea Y• • •· Th ae data and the map are on fUe Most were below 1 pCi cm 0 01 uCi m i the highest value 40 pCi cm2 of Pu 0 4 uCi m2 was south of the strea close to the shore and in general the higher values were to the west an south as might be expected from the prevailing winds blowing snow westward and southward The islands where the birds nest were low or ze•o Narssarsuk on the south coast and back into its ravine seemed to have an average level higher than the rest He estimated that there might be 10 curies spread out on the ice and land exclusive of the streak There was no al ha activity the lake f _om which the Base water supply is taken 116 curies of J 9 Pu• l gra iD Files - 6 - April 19 1968 In the afternoon a number of subjects of a technical or logi1tic nature There were no difficultiea in reaching agreements which next day Tuesday became items on the Gentlemen's Agreement document Attachment III For example General Hunziker noted it was easy to decontaminate completely the trucks and heavy snow removal equipment but it was hard to remove the Pu that was embedded in small cuts on the tires-Would it be satisfactory to use 450 c m on the standard o -counter as the limit for use of those tires on the base Dr Gj rup made some calculations and said Yes And so it went were di•cussed Six other items are of interest The area enclosed by the 60 g m2 line as determined by the Fidler instrument will be roped off an prohibited to the Greenlanders until the ice aelts and or goes out into the strait 1 2 Langham repeated that the plane mu•t have come in at a 15° angle to the surface with the left wing 600 down The nose of the plane is fragile and only 0 8 G is required to crush it up against the leading edge of the wing 3 G ls needed to crush the wing assembly Hence he deduced that the wing touched and pulled the nose down It crumpled the bOllb ahakles broke and one set off the other three The explosion blew downward and rearward and as the bomb bay doors are very thin relatively clean Pu was blown against the ice of the cracked area particularly its south half Momentum kept the heavy pieces of the plane going forward and hence some might be free of contamination especially if protected by a blanket of metal plastic and fuel 3 Did part of the plane go through the ice There were a few desultory _guesses but no one had sound reasons for either view However if the mass of the wing and central fuselage is given a value of 1 1 the anterior part of the plane has a value of 0 001 with the tail section 0 0001 The tail has aerodynamic properties and tends to go sailing off on its own What happened to it 4 Well-frozen ice with an undisturbed surface has a surface tension as high as steel and would retain all Pu impacted on it The north half of _ the crushed area is almost free of Pu_ the aouth half waa very 1' 1£ CHIVES 5 Possibly the remaining Pu and · fuel- could be immobilized by putting carbonized-sand an oil-getter used by the Navy and available from Navy stores on the cleaned-up area This•will retain heat from the sun _ help the underlying ice to melt and drop the getter plus oil and Pu · to the bottom General Hunziker agreed to carry out an experiment to •ee if it might work if it does this will be applied to the atreak 6 The Danes felt that from now on it was not necessary to make a lot of duplicate samples of snow plankton 1 wanimal material etc They would do all that they felt was necessary for monitoring surveillance Would this be all right with the U s scientists We agreed that it would Files • 7 April 19 1968 The Air Force will provide logistic support for the Danes Dr Vibe their mammalogist will do the sampling in the bay Dr Martin•Hensen their fisheries expert will carry on a survey of whether fish migrating southward if any have Pu in them They intend to maintain a flexible approach to take care of unexpected findings They saw no need to sample the dust or the earth on the southern headlands Their reasons for this low-key insistence on the above monitoringsurveillance were given privately as having to do with the native Greenlanders' outlook on logic Their approach was If we declare the bay to be suitable for hunting and travel then we can't mount a big investigative program with foreigners in evidence for the Greenlander will say Is the bay safe or is it not What you say and do are different The Greenlander however• will understand if we sort of casually check out a seal or two etc In brief it appears that the Danes intend to minimize the hazardsmonitoring-surveillance aspects of the bay and dismiss them from public view Nothing definitive was said about tritium it too will receive the same low key treatment E g Gj rup and I compared H figures The MPC for 3H for a radiation worker ingesting his us al intake of water during 40 hours per week is 0 03 Ci ml or 3xlo7 Ci km Assume 200 000 Ci of tritium was on in the ice Then 3xl07 2xl0 5 1 5xl02 or a factor of safety of 150 for a radiation worker if the 200 000 Cl were confined to only one cubic kilometer of ba_I water He said there cannot poss bly be a hazard and dismissed it LThe bay has a volume of about 50 km• the 3H released was lea than x105_c1 1 and much of that went up in the initial fire column as H2 or ROH Hence in the most pleasant way possible the Danes officially gave us to understand that they considered the surveillance in behalf of the Greenlanders and Danish soil their problem and they proposed to take care of it This was also said personally to me in various ways by different members of the team whom by now I can regard as personal friends Attachments Participants in the Conference on th Thule Accident Cleanup 18-19 March 1968 The Pentagon ao0111 4£871 Gentlemen's AgreeMent Thule Environmental Investigation Program Summer of 1968 DOE ARCHIVES Attachment -1 PARTICIPANTS IN THE CONFERENCE ON THE THULE ACCIDENT CLEANUP 18 - 19 March 1968 The Pentagon• Room 4£871 Danish Visitors Permanent Undersecretary of State Chairman Executive COIIIDittee Mr Hans H Koch Danish AEC Professor J rgen Koch University of Copenhagen Consultant to Danish National Health Service Dr H L Gj rup Head Health Physics Riso Dr Elgen Juel Henningsen Deputy Director-General Danish National Health Service Dr c F Jacobsen Assistant Director Riso Mr G Vlgh Secretary Danish AEC Mr Anker Hansen Scientific Counselor to Danish Embassy U s Participants Dr Carl Walske Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Atomic Energy Major General Richard O Hunziker Deputy Chief of Staff for Materiel Strategic Air Command Chief SAC Disaster Control Team Dr Gerald F Tape Commissioner USAEC DOE Major General Otto J Glasser Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development USAF Dr Wright H Langham Leader Bio-Medical Research Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Mr Herbert M Parker Battelle Memorial Institute Pacific Northwest Laboratory Dr H D Bruner Assistant Director Division of ARCHIVF s Biology and Medicine USAEC - 2 - Major Joseph S Pizzuto Health Physlclst Secretary USAF Radioisotope Comnittee Briaadier General Albert J Bowley Commander 45th Alr Division SAC President Eighth Air Force Alrcraft Accident Investigation Team Colonel Chester A Hockett Deputy Director of Munitions Strategic Air Coamand Executive Officer SAC Disaater Control Team Mr James L Olsen Lawrence lladlation wboratory Livermore California Colonel Jack c Fitzpatrick United States Army DASA Colonel Oscar J • Sundstrom Chief Nuclear Branch Directorate of Supply and Servlces USAF Mr Frank Tucker Scandinavian Affalrs U S State Department l OE ARCHIVES Attachment It Thia document records the gentlemen's agreements11 rea_ched during the Danish US meeting of 18-19 March in Washington and is supplementary to the similar document written in Copenhagen on 16 February 1968 1 The aircraft debris currently stored in sealed containers will be removed from Greenland as soon as convenient possibly this summer based on the availability of retrograde cargo 2 Regarding the black area the removal measures completed to date are considered adequate The snow and ice which have been removed are stored in sealed metal containers and present no hazard in this state It is agreed that the contained radioactive material will be removed from Greenland as soon as convenient The exact approaches to be employed i e _concentration by filtration versus bulk removal are to be the subject of detailed study by the U s Air Force The recoanended plan will be · presented to both goverPl 'ents for approval prior to implementation 3 The vehicles will be decontaminated to levels consistent with good ealth physics practices It is agreed that less than 2x10· 6 uc cm 450 cpm as measured by a standard swipe sample constitute an acceptable level insofar as the tires are concerned On the vehicle itself a factor of 10 below this level is considered adequate 4 The proposal to enclose the crash scene by stanchions and rope is acceptable At an appropriate time the Danish AEC will take measures to release the hitherto restricted area for public use with the exception of this limited zone which will continue under obaer• vation The Danish AEC will be notified when this rope is in place 5 It was agreed that the U S Air Force would implement the suggestion to treat the 2500 square meters active region of the impact area with carbon sand to accelerate the melting of this region This technique will_be tested on similar ice as early as possible The u s Air Poree will also continue to evaluate measures for the physical removal of exposed radioactive ice and debris DOE ARCHIVES 6 The so-called black area and cracked ice area which -are estimated to contain an insignificant part of the total Pu distributed on the ice will be left in its present state 7 Roads and other public areas will continue to be monitored and detected contamination will be _kept to levels consistent with good health physics practices 8 The tank farm and other restricted work areas will also be monitored and by the conclusion of operations contamination will be reduced to 1 vels consistent with good health physics practices 9 The Danish AEC will conduct an ecological program as de1cribed in the attached plan with logistic support being provided by the u s Air Force as required 10 The Danish AEC will conduct aurveillance of the shore lines in accordance with the attached plan The U S Air Force will be available to aasiat as required in the removal of any discovered debris 11 The queation of• possible search of the sea bottom was reserved for further study of coats and utility by the U s Air Force Should such a search be undertaken the reeults would be made available to the Danish AEC 12 As a general policy any of the above plans is 1ubject to modification based on new evidence•• it is collected 13 Major policy questions will continue to be decided on the baaia of Washington Copenhagen agreement Minor policy and detailed operational decisions will be made jointly at Thule DOE ARCHIVE 5 •• ' Ria March 14 1968 Thule Environmental Investigation Program Summer of 1968 To be carried out by the Danes 1 ·samples for Plutonium AnalYsis Samples will be collected of the following primary media sea water sea bottom zooplankton and mussels These samples will be collected in two zones zone I enclosed by a circle with its center at the site of impact and radius l km and zone II comprising Bylot Sund and Wolstenholme Fjord In zone I the following numbers of samples will be taken 4 sea water samples 10 bottom samples 4 plankton samples and 12 mussel samples In zone II will be taken 12 sea water samples 12 bottom samples 12 plankton samples and 12 mussel samples In addition the following secondary samples will be collected from the area as a whole 9 samples of 9 samples of little auk 6 samples of 3 samples of 3 samples of 5 samples of 3 samples of · 2 seals' faeces walrus bearded seal and harp seal birds' faeces common eider long-tailed duck wing snail seaweed lichen from Narssarssuk eiderdown fish polar cod Survey of Coast Lines The coast from Uvdle to Cap Athol and the coasts of Saunders Island Wolstenholme Island Eider Islands and Dalrymple Rock will be searched for debr1s A suitable procedure has to be established '- bOEARCHWE 5 Further surveys e g of the northern coast of Wolstenholme Fjord will depend on the wind conditions following the ice melting