The AEC Division of Reactor Development and Technology has supported
extensive environmental studies to assess the safety of isotopic power
sources (to be discussed later) in oceanic environments. One of the most
important of these is being conducted by the Naval Radiological Defense
Laboratory at an ocean environmental testing complex near San Clemente
Island off the coast of California, which includes a shore installation
and a floating ocean platform. These studies are to determine seawater
corrosion of containment alloys and fuel solubility in seawater; the
dispersion of the fuel in the ocean; the effect of the radioactive
material on marine life; and the radiation hazard to man, when all
significant exposure pathways are considered.
In another study the Chesapeake Bay Institute of Johns Hopkins
University investigated potential hazards that might result if
radioactive materials were released off the Atlantic Coast. Five areas
along the Continental Shelf were examined in detail for environmental
factors such as vertical diffusion. The same Institute made
environmental and physical dispersion studies off Cape Kennedy, Florida,
to predict the fate of any radioactive materials that might be released
in aborted launchings of nuclear rockets or nuclear auxiliary power
devices for space uses. Fluorescent dye was released into offshore, surf
zone, and inshore locations; the diffusion was observed, sampled, and
compared with existing diffusion theory. Mathematical models have been
developed that can now be used to predict the rate and extent of
diffusion in the Cape Kennedy area in the event of any radioactivity
release from aborted test flights.
Similar studies have been carried out near the space launching site at
Point Arguello, California, by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
These included collection of data on dispersion, marine sediments, and
the biological uptake of radioactive plutonium, polonium, cesium, and
strontium.