Study of radioactive particles in soil contaminated by the BOMARC nuclear weapon accident

In this work, we have investigated several actinide-bearing particles, collected from the 1960 Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center missile accident soil and analyzed the morphological and elemental fingerprints that are associated with its geographic location and particulate composition. In this research, we located 70 actinide bearing particles ranging in diameter from 1 to 34 µm from a sample of soil contaminated by residual radioactive materials from the conflagration of a nuclear weapon and subsequent fire suppression efforts. Particles were evaluated based upon morphology with four size distributions with similar circularity and three major particle classes present based on shape, angularity, and surface features.