Army Pulse Radiation Facility

A rare glimpse into the Cold War's nuclear testing infrastructure, this technical manual documents the Army Pulse Radiation Facility: a specialized reactor designed to simulate the radiation environment of nuclear explosions. The document provides exhaustive specifications for the facility's Reactor Building and supporting laboratories, detailing how engineers achieved controlled bursts of intense fast neutron and gamma radiation for weapons effects testing. Beyond mere architecture, the manual lays out exposure scenarios, performance parameters, dosimetry methods, and the strict safety protocols that governed experimentation. Tables throughout present core design data and performance metrics in clinical detail. For researchers interested in how the U.S. military prepared for and understood nuclear warfare, this obscure publication offers a window into the classified world of radiation effects research. It captures a specific moment when America sought to understand precisely how its weapons would perform and how its materials would survive.