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So I tracked down the name and phone number of the Director of Union Carbide's Tarrytown Nuclear Laboratories. He is Dr. S.R. Aspinall, a patient and courteous gentleman who listened to my questions Lasked him first: "Could any of your nuclear experiments on the night of October 11, 1966, have caused a rise in the radiation level by a factor of four in the vicinity of northern Ringwood, N.J.?" reactor?" His reply was simple: "Ours is an open reactor immersed in a great depth of water. As you know, water by itself is one of the most effective radiation filters. But apart from that, we have elaborate systems of filtering to assure that radiation does not escape into the air." He suggested that a man more competent than he to give me precise information about the reactor would be Dean Holzgraf, Manager of Nuclear Operations for Union Carbide at Sterling Forest, N.Y. He gave me Holzgraf's switchboard and extension numbers. I asked Holzgraf the same questions. In answer to both questions, the Manager of Nuclear Operations said: "We have an automatic shutdown system for the reactor. If there is any malfunction, the reactor cuts off itself. This has happened only once in our entire history of operation - and we work the reactor steadily five days a week. The one time we had a shutdown was caused by a freak condition that saturated our detection instruments. And that shutdown did not occur on October 11, 1966. It happened a much longer time a go." Mr. Holzgraf added, as a possible explanation for the four-times increase in radiation level detected by John de Giacomo and Jim Bonney, that the hills around Sterling Forest, Ringwood and the Wanaque Reservoir are "loaded with radioactive rocks that contain some thorium and uranium. Uranium decays into radon, a radioactive gas with a half-life of 30 minutes." It was radon rolling off the hills that caused a saturation of the detection instruments and shutdown of the reactor on one special occasion when there was a clear, cold, still morning with a temperature inversion that prevented the gas from "However," explained Holzgraf, "the rocks are not so rich in radioactive materials that they could be hazardous to human Me. They are just rich enough to cause occasional odd conditions." This left me almost exactly where I had started-except that the Union Carbide Company's nuclear reactor could not possibly have been a cause of the increased radiation level detected by the two young glowing electrified gases which might be mistaken for UFOs by scientifically untrained observers. If, on the other hand, there had been no leakage of the reactor, the Giacomo theory would be invalid and the mystery of the strange UFO would remain unsolved. with some concern. His answer was: "I don't think so." Next I asked: "On that night, or at any other time, was there a leakage of radiation detected from your being dissipated into the atmosphere.