Divine Strake Explosion Plans Move Forward

The U.S. Energy Department last month advanced plans for testing a massive bunker-busting explosion later this year in the Nevada desert by releasing a revised draft environmental assessment that found little risk from the experiment, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 20, 2006).

The plans call for exploding up to 700 tons of conventional explosives above a tunnel at the Nevada Test Site, home to hundreds of U.S. nuclear tests.  The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency originally said the explosion, called Divine Strake, was intended to simulate a small nuclear weapon, but later retracted that assertion (see GSN, April 7, 2006).

Plans to conduct the test last year were delayed after Nevada and Utah residents expressed concern that the explosion could disperse radioactive material from past nuclear tests (see GSN, May 10, 2006).

However, the draft environmental assessment released Dec. 20 says it is “extremely unlikely” that any dispersed radioactivity would cause harm.

“Because the nearest member of the public resides approximately 12 miles from the (test site) boundary, this individual would receive only a fraction of the modeled dose,” the assessment says.  Three public hearings have been scheduled for next week (Jennifer Talhelm, Associated Press, Dec. 22).

The test is intended to study the effects of the explosion on hardened and deeply buried targets, according to the draft assessment, and it supports a U.S. goal to be able to “quickly respond to threats anywhere in the world with conventional tactics and munitions.”

The blast would take place above a tunnel that “is in a geological setting that simulates the characteristics of important potential global adversarial targets,” the assessment says (Energy Department environmental assessment, Dec. 20, 2006).

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