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Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office -University of California, Davis Department of Geology This will acknowledge your letter of August 3), 1978 regarding my Although you do not mention the dates of your visits t o Enewetak, I assume that they must have been in the late Y 1601s or early 1970's well after the conclusion of the nuclear test.ng at that atoll. During those years there is no credible way t ,at a person visiting o r working a t Enewetak could have sustained dose, exceeding U. S. Federal. Standards, due 3 environmental radiatesting, of determining after the fact what r,ye may have been accrued. What we can do after ' the fact is to assay the numan body for certain gama-emitting radionuclides and the excreta or certain others. We have done this Fn the case of a few people kn iw n to have participated extensively in activities on Runit and there ults, without exception, have been negative. remained overnight on Runit . My statement to., i fIre call it c o ' rect ly, was thatI do not believe he has any reason t o be <concerned but that if it would relieve his mind t o have a bio-assay done, I would be pleased t o arrange for it. The procedure i s non-intrusive and could be c! )ne at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. I make the same statements toyoi, not as a recommendation b u t simply as an offer. Nor, by the way, is there any zy, by examination o r Included were persons wh J have picnicked and
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PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED A word about t h e quarantive on hnit and abot TLLda. First, the quarantive was imposed on : n it in the spring of 1972 when we found that there were pieces of plutonium assay on and near the surface ats island, Although these presented no part icu, hazard t o people working on Emit, w e wanted to isolate that contamin- ion and not run the risk of spreading a it, by vehicle tire or shoe sol?. for example, t o boats and other atoll locations. the primary plutonium hazard (resuspension of.)articles of res pir able size)is extremely low even under the extra or nary conditions of surface disturbance and soil movement. As totbl "dump site " , I assume that you refer tothe monument and underlying buried debris on the man - made causeway between Sally and Tilda. measurements in that area and the Defense Depc I-tment has conducted fairly extensive sub-surface investigations. It apps ;LTS that the debris which i s buried there is very well contained, and tl3t short of excavating t o a depth of several feet it is difficult to i mc zine any way of becoming, exposed to a radiation hazard in that area. I hope that this letter places atleast some tal witha high locations on that Evidence from thr cleanup operation is that We ha 2 made many surface ' your concerns in clearer ,e again i f you have fur the rPlease do not hesitate to write.