Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Japanese nuclear incident puts Brooks team on standby

Released: 8 Oct 1999

BROOKS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- The National Command Authorities recently called on the Air Force Radiation Assessment Teams here to stand by to help the Japanese following that nation's worst nuclear radiation incident.

While team members were notified Oct. 4, they wouldn't be traveling to Japan, they continued efforts to help. AFRAT planners developed a map profile showing the potential dispersal area of radioactive material near Tokyo, where an out-of-control chain reaction at a fuel fabrication plant in the town of Tokaimura occurred Sept. 30.

"We've used meteorological data to plot a dose field contamination profile to better prepare us to stage our assets," said Lt. Col. Randall Scott, AFRAT commander.

Besides three injured plant workers and 40 others who were contaminated, more than 300,000 civilians living in the affected area were at risk.

"We developed a model involving the fission release of radiation gases using the Global Weather Information System," said Scott. "It gives us a snapshot of potential hazards. Fortunately, radiation levels outside the plant are lower than we originally thought."

For more than 30 years AFRAT has been the Defense Department's primary radioanalytical asset, responding to military and civilian radiation emergencies worldwide.

The Defense Department established AFRAT in the 1950s in the wake of a nuclear weapons incident in Spain. Since then, AFRAT has responded to numerous emergencies, providing health physics and radioanalytical support primarily to American military forces.

In April 1986, AFRAT dispatched teams to Europe and Asia to monitor potential radiation fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the Soviet Ukraine.

Headquartered at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, AFRAT is part of the Institute for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Risk Analysis. It is designed to be a task force organized depending upon the contingency. Teams can range from two to 37 members.

AFRAT is composed of a Radioanalytical Assessment Team, which measures, analyzes and interprets environmental and occupational radioactivity in soil, air and water. It also has two Nuclear Incident Response Force teams, which focus primarily on nuclear weapons incidents and potential terrorist acts involving weapons of mass destruction.

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* Brooks Air Force Base, Texas
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