Airborne Penetration of Radioactive Clouds
Abstract
This report evaluates the threat to aircrew members when their aircraft approaches and subsequently penetrates a descending radioactive cloud generated by a nuclear weapon surface burst. The re-development of Hickman's program consists of a remodeling of the computational methods for sky-shine dose and cloud model. The code also computes the ionizing dose rate an air crew member receives when flying through the radioactive cloud as a function of time. The code computes the doses by considering the cloud size, the aircraft's transit time, the ingestion rate of radioactive particles, the aircraft's distance to the burst, and the aircraft's altitude. A simple extension of the computer code computes the dose received from multiple bursts. The results show that at 9500 meters (about 31,000 feet), the total dose to each aircrew member is about 5 rem after flying through the cloud 1 hour after cloud stabilization. The multiple burst dose is approximately 204 rem under the same conditions as the single burst case. Both the single and multiple burst case use a mission completion time of 8 hours after entering the cloud.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1983
- Accession Number
- ADA135848
Entities
People
- Terry R. Kling
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology