 There's been an accident. A private plane has collided with the U.S. Army helicopter carrying nuclear weapons. The two aircraft have crashed in the rural town of Waumoni, California. Explosions, smoke and fire attract the townspeople and a volunteer fire department to the Christ site. People are injured trying to rescue the Christ victims and soon an ambulance speeds the injured to a nearby hospital. Before long, the sheriff and state police arrive. The press learns of the crash and videotapes it from the air. Closer inspection reveals that this is actually the Nevada test site, the setting for the exercise in responding to a nuclear weapon accident. The exercise will test the validity of the lessons learned and the corrective actions generated from the nation's first major nuclear weapon accident exercise held in 1979. This exercise will also provide for expanded participation by civilian emergency response agencies. California in particular has been invited to participate because it is widely recognized as having a well-organized emergency response capability. During the exercise, a number of federal agencies along with the Department of Defense and Energy will practice the coordinated procedures necessary to manage a nuclear weapon accident. The exercise, New Wax 81, has begun. Plunging helicopter had transmitted a May Day message which was relayed to personnel in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. They started tasking forces to respond to a broken arrow, the code word for a nuclear weapon accident. The Pentagon first notified March Air Force Base, which was the closest military installation to the accident, and ordered them to deploy the initial response force. The NMCC then found that the California Highway Patrol dispatcher had already alerted March. One of the first lessons learned in this no-fault exercise was that the notification of response forces could come from civil agencies as well as through military channels. As a result, the military's initial notification system was expanded to tie in with operations centers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Energy. As March's initial response force was preparing to depart for Romoni, the Base Command Post alerted a Navy explosive ordnance disposal team from North Island Naval Air Station, California to join them. Meanwhile, the California Highway Patrol had asked the California Department of Transportation to bring in radiation monitoring equipment. Exercise planners challenged state agencies with the potential problems of radioactive contamination in an accident of this type, affecting land, vehicles, local industry products, livestock, and townspeople. After both the crash and the townspeople's response had been staged, two short-lived radioactive elements, Radium-223 and Mercury-197, were dispersed to enhance the realism of the problems posed in the exercise. These elements exercise radiation detection instruments as the materials in nuclear weapons would. Their half-lives, however, are days rather than thousands of years. Their concentrations were low, thus allowing the accident site to return to normal, pre-exercise radiation levels in a relatively few days. Because of the danger of further explosions, the sheriff and state police had evacuated the town. When the California Transportation's Monitor showed evidence of radioactivity, authorities retained people for medical observation if they had been at the accident site. They notified the hospital that those injured in the accident response might have been contaminated. The state's Office of Emergency Services was informed of the contamination and a health officer was dispatched. When the initial response force arrived, the on-scene commander, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Shea, was briefed on the situation. Upon initially responding, my first concern, of course, was exactly where the site was. My attention then turned to casualties. I wanted to know the status of casualties and fires if there were any fires still up in the area. The policeman told me that they had already taken care of the casualties, that all the people that had been injured had been evacuated from the scene, and all the fires had been extinguished and that all the fire department people that were in the area had been gotten out of the area. That allowed me to turn my attention then to establishing a security cordon around the area and radiological safety. One of his first duties was to secure classified material, but he had to contend with other immediate problems as well. The local townspeople expressed their concerns to his legal and public affairs officers. Throughout the exercise, an aggressive press demanded the authorities' attention. In this instance, the public affairs officer at the scene released a statement about the presence of hazardous, but non-radioactive materials. Due to communications breakdowns, he did not know that the military authorities in Washington had already publicly confirmed the presence of radioactivity. Right at the initial response time, did not know that the Department of Defense had made a public release that weapons were involved. Ultimately, that proved to really be beneficial to us because it enabled us to be able to talk freely out on the site with the press people. The exercise pointed out the need for closer coordination between the response course commander at the scene and the National Military Command Center and other headquarters. While legal and public affairs officers responded to questions from local residents and the press, two newspaper photographers approached the accident site and took pictures that might have shown classified material. Although the Air Force personnel insisted on confiscating the film, it actually would have been up to the civil authorities or FBI to do so. This brought up a recurring point in the exercise. Who's in charge and who has jurisdiction? The initial on-scene commander established a national defense area to protect government property. This is essentially a military restricted area established on private land and within a civil jurisdiction. It was manned by perimeter guards and during the course of the exercise, its legality was challenged by concerned citizens. This pointed out a need for the federal government to be prepared to explain to the public the necessity of such exclusion areas. The on-scene commander established some communications within 20 minutes of his arrival and immediately initiated weapon reconnaissance. The radiation monitoring team and the Navy explosive ordnance disposal team soon accounted for one weapon, five casualties, and three cans of classified components. While teams continued the weapon search, the commander set up a contamination control station to control entry into the area. The National Military Command Center alerted the DOD's Joint Nuclear Accident Coordinating Center, or JNAC. The DOD JNAC in turn notified its DOE counterpart. The Department of Defense and Department of Energy's JNACs are located at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. These centers coordinate and dispatch specialized assets needed to deal with an accident, including air transportation. The DOE's JNAC alerted its accident response group and dispatched elements of the group to the accident site at the on-scene commander's request. They entered through the contamination control station and promptly identified a second weapon. The Federal Emergency Management Agency representative in the National Military Command Center helped coordinate the involvement of federal assets outside of the Department of Defense and Energy at the national level. As an example, investigation of the accident had to be coordinated between the National Transportation Safety Board concerned with the private plane and the military. Since the Army had custody of the weapons at the time of the accident, the National Military Command Center directed the Army Operation Center to deploy a service response force to Amoni. This response force was commanded by Major General Allent Nord from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Specialty trained response forces from around the country supported him. The hub of the Army's response force was the nuclear accident and incident control team from Sierra Army Depot, California. Radiological control teams from the Army joined the Air Force Occupational and Environmental Health Laboratory to support the effort. Teams for explosive ordnance disposal, communications, security, and logistics also deployed. Base camp support for the response elements came from Fort Carson, Colorado. The service response forces on-scene commander can retain any assets already on-scene and can request others as necessary regardless of their parent military service. When we arrived at the accident scene, my first initiative was to find Lieutenant Colonel Shea and determine the situation at the accident site. Because of the confusion of many activities at one time, I asked him to take two to three hours, put his people together, and come and give us a detailed briefing, all of us who had arrived on the scene with all of the different disciplines. With the concurrence of the Army Operations Center, General Nord requested additional assets. One such asset was the Air Transportable Radiac Package, an Air Force team from Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, which remains on alert to furnish technicians, equipment, and spare parts for a radiological instrument repair. Airborne mapping and monitoring teams, such as the Air National Guard and Department of Energy's aerial measuring system, supported the accident response effort. Exercise planners presented unique challenges to the weapon recovery teams, composed of experts from the Army, Navy, and the National Laboratories. Three Army training weapons were used, representing two designed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory and one by the Atlantis Livermore National Laboratory. One of the weapons remained in the helicopter. Its explosive component had completely burned, but the weapon remained essentially intact. The second weapon's high explosive detonated in the fire, scattering pieces of the weapon, and releasing contamination over a wide area. Because they could not readily find all of the pieces, the response group feared that some of the nuclear materials had fallen into the town water supply and contaminated it. Tests determined the water was contaminated, as was the fire truck when it refilled its tank. At first light, the second day, General Nord sent up a helicopter to search for the third weapon. My prime concern was to locate that third weapon. It was spotted in a gully about a quarter mile southeast of the wreckage. Although it was badly crushed by the impact, it had not detonated. Neither recovery teams, nor a helicopter equipped with monitoring equipment, found any contamination in that area. The existing national defense area had to be expanded to include this weapon. Recovery personnel called in specialized diagnostics teams. Using radiographs and conferring with designers back at Los Alamos, the team prepared a render safe plan. They decided that the loose pieces of high explosive could be removed and the remainder desensitized with a thorough application of oil. But the questions still remained. Where should the weapon be taken? Weapon assembly plant personnel said they could not safely disassemble it at their facility. The Nevada test site director was contacted. Would he accept the weapon, destroy it underground and thus dispose of it? Yes, if it could be transported safely. The problem then was how to safely package the mangled weapon and remove it from Wamoni. The decision was made to form the warhead in place without removing it from its shipping container using a foam specially designed for this purpose. The last step was to form the weapon and its shipping container inside a jet engine pod for transportation. Federal and state officials helped the service response force gain permission from the landowner to build an access road on his property. During the exercise week, these teams worked in a smooth cooperative effort to meet the challenges. Exercise analysts recommended that in future recovery operations, the teams implement joint planning to include written procedures and to conduct dry runs under the direction of the senior explosive ordinance disposal officer. Players discovered that a can containing classified components had been opened and that an item was missing. While personnel made a house-to-house search, the on-scene commander asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to call the FBI. The FBI coordinated with the security forces and local authorities to help recover the souvenir. Communications caused a number of special problems. One induced by the exercise artificiality of the Nevada test site location was that no real commercial telephone system existed. In addition, sophisticated Department of Defense satellite communications assets, which would be provided in the event of an actual accident, could not be made available for an exercise at that time. Most problems resulted, however, from a combination of equipment incompatibility, equipment failure, and independently established communications centers. It was so difficult to establish a secure message capability that even after General Nord's arrival, secure messages had to be sent by courier to the nearest military base for transmittal. In the future, an immediate link needs to be available between the accident site and the various military and civil command centers to allow direct transmission of classified information. While each response element deployed with sufficient capability to satisfy its own needs, the composite requirements of the joint response effort at times overloaded the individual communications centers. The lesson is to identify and inventory the communications assets of each response element as it arrives, so that these assets might be shared when needed. Inventorying and sharing assets is also applicable to command and control radiological safety and health physics, medical coordination, and public affairs. Leaders of these elements need to caucus to become aware of each other's responsibilities and assets. The DNA nuclear weapon accident response procedures manual catalogs available support and recommends procedures for responding to a nuclear weapon accident. Exercise New Wax 79 demonstrated the need for this publication, and lessons learned from New Wax 81 helped refine the manual. The problems of radiological contamination were interesting and varied. The possibility existed that the meatpacking plant and the produce market were contaminated as well as the water supply and the cattle. Some of the injured rescuers and some of the firefighters received contamination. One resident expressed concern about the possible effects of radiation exposure on her pregnancy. The on-scene commander throttled most of these concerns through the California Office of Emergency Services to the proper state and local health agencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency contacted the Food and Drug Administration with regard to contaminated food products. In addition, the commander's legal staff set up a claims office and handled problems such as those caused by impounding local products within the national defense area. It is evident that response forces must be prepared to meet a variety of legal problems and that they will need experienced legal personnel to handle them. California response personnel sampled soil and air around the perimeter and the Army asked them to establish a bioassay program to screen the townspeople. This brought to light the need for more effective coordination among military, federal and state radiation control elements. Data collected should be pooled and reported in a standardized measurement unit. This data can then be used by combined advisory staff to plan a total health physics program. Doctors with response force need training in the coordination of various organizations responding to radiological health problems. Additionally, responding medical personnel must be trained to handle contaminated patients. They should also be aware of the expertise available from the Army's radiological advisory medical team, which specializes in this type of health hazard. The public affairs officers of the various response agencies had established a joint information center at the base camp by the end of the first day of the exercise. They held frequent joint news conferences to keep news media representatives and townspeople informed. The center functioned in a cooperative manner but demonstrated the need to revise some present planning. It was also evident that additional support personnel and equipment were needed. The aggressiveness of reporters and concerned citizens became a security problem for the on-scene commanders. The initial response force security was especially handicapped by being too small to effectively cover the large national defense area perimeter. Lieutenant Colonel Shea therefore requested support from military and civil police. This security force must be capable of rapid augmentation and may need radiological protective clothing and equipment as well. A demonstration one afternoon grew into a potential riot. General Nord requested more perimeter guards and sheriff's deputies and ordered extra security placed around the weapons. A water cannon was positioned at the gate. Some people acting as demonstrators penetrated the area and MPs removed them. During the demonstration, the assistant to the secretary of defense for atomic energy, Dr. James Wade, paid a visit and was surrounded by actors playing demonstrators and the press. Dr. Wade had expressed a vital interest in the accident and General Nord gave him a thorough briefing. In general, I think Dr. Wade found that the exercise was fulfilling its objectives and he found great interest in all of the technical aspects, legal aspects and public affairs as well. Visitors to exercise New Wax 81 were accommodated in two separate sessions, one for the real press and one for officials of the agencies involved in the exercise. The exercise hosted foreign observers as well. All were treated to a grandstand view and briefings by the on-scene commanders and the exercise director Brigadier General John Mitchell. A thorough radiation control program was enforced for all participants, players, umpires and control staff. Everyone inside the control area was protected with anti-contamination clothing and respirators. In addition, the bioassay program was carried out with the use of detectors to screen perimeter security personnel as well as everyone who entered a contamination control station. A less visible aspect of the radiological control program was this documentation. The defense nuclear agency retained exposure records of all New Wax participants. The data were collected by a radiation detecting film badges and the bioassay program. Of the 1400 participants in the exercise, the only persons receiving even a measurable amount of radiation were some of the control staff's contaminants betters. The highest rating among that group was only 5% of the allowable quarterly dose for radiation workers in the United States. In the early part of the exercise, we gave priority to securing the weapons, to saving them and recovering them. But also all along we were concerned about site restoration and we began work immediately on that aspect as well. The basic questions addressed were what must be done, who will approve and carry out the plan and who will pay for it. Finding the answers to these and related questions will be a significant aspect of the long-term effort associated with response to a real nuclear weapons accident. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration assisted in formulating the cleanup plan since the environment, livestock and produce were involved. All response elements agreed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be in charge of developing the plan and coordinating its final approval among the various agencies. The chief of the Special Air Force Contamination Disposal Team was assigned as the chief of staff for site restoration. He coordinated areas of responsibilities and duties with the appropriate agencies. Restoration planners from these agencies agreed on measurement criteria to use for soil sampling and the depth of contaminated soil removal. It was apparent that Federal agencies should continue to develop collective guidance for radioactive cleanup. In order to prevent contaminated soil from being blown by the wind before it was removed, the on-scene commander wanted to spray it with a fixing agent. The Environmental Protection Agency concurred if residues from the agent would not adversely degrade the environment. The Army Operations Center identified a military airborne firefighting system which could airdrop the agent. Tracking a request for support such as this illustrates some of the command and control complexities which need to be examined. Military forces are used in support of the on-scene commander through his own chain of command and in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency through the Army's directorate of military support. Technically, military responsibility for the area ended with the removal of the weapons. However, California asked the Army to remain to control the contaminated area until civilian security could be arranged because of the long-term nature of the problem. The California governor asked the president to declare Warmoni a disaster area. The president did so, thus releasing federal funds to be used for contracting a private security force. Even though site restoration problems were not played out completely in the exercise, NUACS 81 was a major accomplishment. It brought together senior officials of many accident response organizations to make and implement critical decisions. It validated the lessons learned from NUACS 79 and generated some new ones from the expanded participation of national, state, and local emergency response agencies. There will be more exercises involving simulated nuclear weapons accidents. A full schedule of field exercises, complemented by Command Post exercises, has been developed for implementation through the remainder of the 1980s. These no-fault exercises will continue to enhance the national capability to assess and solve the complex problems associated with an accident involving nuclear weapons.