Nevada Test Site

The Nevada Legislature has taken the first step in demanding that the federal government make amends for massive radioactive contamination left by decades of nuclear weapons testing on a swath of desert the size of Rhode Island. In a joint resolution, the state's Senate and House are asking the federal government to contain and mitigate about 300 million curies of contamination left in the soil and water of the former Nevada Test Site, about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground before testing ended in 1992.

There was a time when a mushroom cloud billowing over the Nevada desert was celebrated as a symbol of American strength — and, about 75 miles southeast in Las Vegas, as a terrific tourist draw. In the 1950s, casinos threw "dawn parties," where gamblers caroused until a flash signaled the explosion of an atomic bomb at the Nevada Test Site. Tourism boosters promoted the Atomic Cocktail (vodka, brandy, champagne and a dash of sherry) and pinups such as Miss Atomic Blast, who was said to radiate "loveliness instead of deadly atomic particles.

There is no doubt that the research and development of military technologies, such as the atmospheric atomic testing program at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s, posed a greater risk of technological catastrophe than do most of the society's civilian risky technologies. Furthermore, America's governmental leaders, from the scientists and technicians at Los Alamos to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, believed they had a fundamental obligation to continue the development of state-of-the-art military technology--no matter how risky the technology was to persons and the ecosystem.

The Nevada Legislature has taken the first step in demanding that the federal government make amends for massive radioactive contamination left by decades of nuclear weapons testing on a swath of desert the size of Rhode Island. In a joint resolution, the state's Senate and House are asking the federal government to contain and mitigate about 300 million curies of contamination left in the soil and water of the former Nevada Test Site, about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground before testing ended in 1992.

Anti-nuclear protesters concluded 10 days of nonviolent demonstrations Sunday at the Nevada Test Site, the nation's center for the nuclear weapons testing program. Thirty-six people were arrested Sunday, including four women discovered south of the Mercury fence "and one man found just on the outskirts of Yucca Flat," Department of Energy spokesman Jim Boyer said. Thirty-one of the Sunday demonstrators were taken to the jail in Beatty, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where they were cited on charges of trespassing and released.

Two men accused of trespassing onto the Nevada Test Site have been convicted in U.S. District Court here. The conviction of John Mento and Theodore Thomas marked the first convictions in federal court for trespassing on the site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In the past, trespassers have been arrested by Nye County authorities, then usually released after being cited. But county authorities have said they will not prosecute trespassers at the site because of the growing number of protests at the remote desert location.

Three Nevada Test Site workers were exposed to radiation last week when they re-entered a tunnel that was contaminated during the troubled Mighty Oak nuclear test April 10, the Department of Energy said. Jim Boyer, a DOE spokesman, said all three received exposure doses that were within occupational safety guidelines. One of the three was also exposed to radioactive iodine last month while re-entering the tunnel where the weapons-effects test was conducted, Boyer said.

The desert normally calls to mind images of danger, loneliness and death, but Jews and Christians remember it also in their traditions as a "place of purification, a place where they could see God." Father Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest from the Netherlands, invoked those pictures of wandering ancient Jews headed for the "promised land" and Jesus tempted in the wilderness as another group of protesters prepared to be arrested this week for trespassing at the U.S.

Twenty-nine more activists opposed to nuclear weapons were arrested at the Nevada Test Site on Easter Sunday, bringing to 283 the number cited during the eight-day Lenten Desert Experience. About 75 demonstrators turned out for a prayer vigil at the main entrance to the test site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Department of Energy spokesman Jim Boyer said 27 people were arrested on state trespass charges for crossing a cattle guard on a road leading to the main gate.

Talks aimed at ending a strike at the nation's nuclear testing grounds and a secret Stealth aircraft base broke off Wednesday as more than 2,800 union workers honored picket lines. Negotiators for the Nevada Test Site's largest contractor and the striking Culinary Union met Wednesday afternoon but talks broke down with no progress reported. Jim Arnold, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Local 226, said the contractor, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Co.

A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada. Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers. When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation.

An environmental and antinuclear group is calling on federal officials to cancel plans to detonate 700 tons of explosives at the Nevada Test Site in an experiment designed to study ground motion and shock waves. Citizen Alert is one of several groups to oppose the test since a Defense Department official stirred controversy last week by saying the June 2 explosion would create "a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas." Federal officials have since retracted the statement.

Scientists at the Nevada Test Site said they generated a current equal to about four times all the electrical power on Earth. The current, which created pressures in materials millions of times greater than normal, was part of an experiment to better understand nuclear weapons. The experiment was conducted at the test site's Atlas pulsed-power facility by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Long before Britney Spears' wedding made headlines here, another blond held Sin City in thrall. The giddy bombshell was photographed in 1957, red-lipsticked mouth in a gaping grin, arms aloft and wearing a makeshift mushroom cloud bathing suit of fluffy cotton blobs. With a ribbon of barren desert horizon stretching behind her lithesome, high-heeled figure, Miss Atomic Bomb is emblematic of a bygone American era, part of Las Vegas' flamboyant past. And one man is out to find her.

The Energy Department lost $458,000 last year giving away equipment it deemed no longer needed for a financially strapped national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, according to its inspector general. A never-used conveyer belt feeder and a generator listed as new were among 1,300 items with a potential value of $1.75 million turned over to a contractor for disposal, according to a report released this week by the department inspector general in Washington. The Sept.

The Bush administration took a big step toward developing a new generation of nuclear weapons Friday when a Senate panel approved a bill that would lift a 10-year ban on researching small atomic bombs for battlefield use and fund more study on a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb.

The strongest of a series of earthquakes to hit the Nevada Test Site tipped over files and knocked pictures from walls Wednesday at a remote facility. It also brought another demand for nearby Yucca Mountain to be disqualified as a place to store highly radioactive nuclear waste. The latest jolt measured magnitude 4.7 and struck the Frenchman Flat area at 2:44 a.m.

The Energy Department sold 23 trucks for 17 cents each, a $9,000 copier for a nickel and a drilling rig for $50,000, just a few examples of hundreds of deals that squandered government resources, federal investigators have found. The sales, which also included motor homes, laboratory equipment and cranes, occurred at the Energy Department's Nevada Test Site, the sprawling installation north of Las Vegas where nuclear bombs were once tested underground.

With equipment mothballed and experts retired, the Nevada Test Site is not ready to meet an Energy Department goal of resuming underground nuclear weapons experiments within three years, a new report said. Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman said it would take funding and a presidential order similar to that needed to develop a new type of weapon to quickly resume nuclear testing at the vast federal reservation 65 miles north of Las Vegas.