Nevada Test Site’s Future Dictated by Its Cold War Past : Nuclear weapons: U.S. declared a moratorium on testing in 1992, and officials doubt that it will be lifted. But finding another use for the area is hampered by the contamination wrought by decades of blasts.
YUCCA FLAT, Nev. — A cold wind whips across the snow-covered desert and through a desolate 15-story tower covering ground zero for America’s next underground nuclear weapons test--if that day ever comes.
The name of the planned test, “Icecap,†seems appropriate given the frigid January weather at this remote weapons research outpost that is larger than the state of Rhode Island.
Scientists who have crafted the nation’s nuclear arsenal over the past half century say continued underground testing is necessary to monitor the safety and reliability of an aging weapons stockpile.
But Energy Department officials who are charged with overseeing the 1,350-square-mile Nevada Test Site think those days may be over.
And they’re searching out new uses for the scarred site where the United States has been conducting nuclear tests for 44 years and whose future is dictated by its past.
America was at war in Korea in 1950 when Gen. Douglas MacArthur, fearing war with China, persuaded President Harry S. Truman to move the U.S. nuclear testing program from the Pacific to the U.S. mainland.
On Jan. 27, 1951, a B-50 from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., lumbered across nearby Frenchman Flat, dropping an atomic bomb that detonated 1,060 feet above the desert floor. The test, the first in Nevada, had an explosive force of 21,000 tons of TNT (21 kilotons).
In the next 11 years, America conducted 100 atmospheric tests. Residents of Las Vegas, then a tiny gaming town 65 miles away, would toast the mushroom clouds rising to the north.
In Bunkerville, Nev.; St. George, Utah, and other downwind communities, folks gathered outdoors to watch radioactive clouds pass overhead. Decades later they would become known as the downwinders--cancer victims who became a tragic legacy of atmospheric testing.
Testing went underground after the Aug. 5, 1963, signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits testing in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere.
The United States has announced 1,054 nuclear tests, 928 of them at the Nevada site. The last was Divider, on Sept. 23, 1992. Nine days later, President George Bush signed a nine-month moratorium, halting all U.S. nuclear testing until July 1, 1993.
Scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico continued preparations for “Icecap,†scheduled for the summer of 1993.
On July 3, 1993, President Clinton extended the test moratorium, and “Icecap†remains on hold, with millions of dollars in preparatory work completed at the site here.
Only the Chinese have tested since the U.S. moratorium began.
On Wednesday, Terry Vaeth becomes acting manager of the DOE’s Nevada Operations Office, the Las Vegas-based agency charged with overseeing the test site. He’s responsible for a state of readiness that would enable the United States to resume testing within six months if a President directed. He’s also scouting new uses for the site.
“I’d be very surprised if they do any more underground nuclear tests,†Vaeth said during a tour of the site. Despite the prediction, he believes continued testing is necessary to check the safety and reliability of a nuclear arsenal crafted more than a decade ago.
“Would you be comfortable using shotgun shells that have been sitting around for 10 years?†he asked.
“We’d rather not have a moratorium. But we think we’re resigned to it now,†he said. “We’re using scientific means to analyze nuclear weapons rather than testing per se.â€
The Strategic Computational Initiative would use computers to simulate nuclear tests. Nevada congressional sources want the new generation nuclear testing done at the Nevada Test Site, but the work will likely go to labs at Los Alamos or Lawrence Livermore in California, the two sites where the nation’s nuclear weapons are designed.
“I think there is a need to test to properly maintain the stockpile,†said Chuck Costa, Los Alamos’ resident manager at the Nevada Test Site.
He offered his opinion during a tour of the imposing 157-foot tower covering a hole eight feet in diameter and 1,625 deep, where the “Icecap†nuclear device would be detonated.
Inside the tower is a canister that would contain the weapon and sensitive equipment that flashes blast data to instrumentation trailers a quarter-mile away. The trailers include signs with Russian writing. The United States and Russia have been allowed to monitor each other’s nuclear tests since 1988.
Costa points out the firing rack that would hold the nuclear weapon to be tested.
A dummy device the same size as the actual weapon sits in the rack. A yard long and 8 to 12 inches in diameter, it staggers the imagination to think such a small device would have an explosive punch several times that of the 15-kiloton bomb that devastated Hiroshima.
For security and safety reasons, the actual nuclear device would be assembled and armed at a field assembly point on the test site and brought to ground zero just hours before the test, Costa said.
Outside, a coyote lopes across the snow, wending around craters that dot the landscape. Yucca Flat is pocked with hundreds of the craters--eerie signatures of nuclear tests conducted 600 to 2,000 feet beneath the Earth’s surface. The craters form when the ground caves into the cavity caused by the underground blast.
The largest, Sedan Crater, was formed July 6, 1962, when a 104-kiloton device buried 635 feet below ground created a cavity 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet in diameter. Sedan was part of Project Plowshare, a study of the use of nuclear devices for peaceful purposes, such as carving out canals.
In the 1960s, Los Angeles County inquired about using nuclear devices to carve a path through the mountains similar to Cajon Pass, in San Bernardino County, recalled DOE spokesman Darwin Morgan. The idea was dropped for the same reason Project Plowshare died--fear of radiation from the blasts.
The Nevada Test Site tour brings awesome reminders of another era, when the world was learning to live with “the bomb.â€
There’s the site of “Apple II†and “Annie†tests in the mid-1950s, when homes and cars half a mile from ground zero were engulfed in flames and blown away in Civil Defense training programs.
At Frenchman Flat, structures built to test their survivability--motel walls, bank vaults, bridges, bomb shelters and an underground parking garage--show the ravages of a nuclear hammering.
Near the edge of Frenchman is the new $100-million Device Assembly Facility, a fortress-like structure where the two labs planned to assemble nuclear weapons that would be tested at Nevada Test Site. Vaeth says the facility, like the test site, can be a national asset rather than a Cold War dinosaur.
“This could be the cornerstone†of new uses for the test site, Vaeth said, approaching the fenced compound and its imposing gun turrets.
He sees the test site as a vast laboratory for a wide range of uses, including laser testing, seismic monitoring, solar energy research, waste management and hazardous chemical testing.
“I don’t want to suggest that Nevada should become a dumping ground. But the Nevada Test Site’s future is dictated by its past. After setting off nuclear weapons for 44 years, there are few things that can be built here.â€
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