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Pentagon to Detonate 700-Ton Explosive
The U.S. Defense Department is scheduled on June 2 to explode a 700-ton explosive to test the capability of a huge conventional bomb to destroy deeply buried facilities that could contain weapons of mass destruction or other threats, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 24). The detonation of heavy ammonium nitrate-fuel oil emulsion would be the largest ever open-air chemical explosion conducted at the Nevada Test Site. “This is the largest single explosive we could imagine doing,” James Tegnelia, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said yesterday. A powerful conventional weapon could be an alternative to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which the Bush administration has promoted as the best option for eliminating underground, hardened enemy facilities. U.S. lawmakers have blocked funding for study of the “bunker buster” in favor of non-nuclear weapons. Tegnelia indicated that a conventional bomb might not be up to the task of eliminating underground facilities as a threat, the Post reported. “It’s a lot easier to dig your tunnel 50 feet deeper” than to produce new weapons able to reach that added depth, he said. The test, to be called “Divine Strake,” would produce an explosion equal to that of 593 tons of TNT in a 36-foot-deep hole. Officials stressed the conventional nature of the test. “The U.S. has no plans to conduct a nuclear test. President [George W.] Bush supports a continued moratorium on nuclear testing,” said DTRA spokeswoman Irene Smith (Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, March 31). While the state has signed off on the desert test, U.S. lawmakers from Nevada expressed concerns about the size of the explosion, the Associated Press reported. “I am concerned that tests of this magnitude have been planned without providing Nevadans with any information about the possible impact on their health and safety,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), in a prepared statement. “Given the level of contamination in areas where nuclear tests were conducted, I have real concerns about the dust and other pollutants that will be released into the air as a result of this explosion,” said Representative Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) (Kathleen Hennessey, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 31).
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