|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Massive Nevada Test Explosion Scrubbed By Jon Fox WASHINGTON — The Defense Department announced yesterday that it was canceling a massive conventional test explosion in Nevada that some feared was designed to emulate a small-yield, “bunker buster” nuclear weapon (see GSN, Feb. 7). The “Divine Strake” blast was slated to take place at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of Past budget documents indicated the test was meant to simulate a nuclear blast, though the Pentagon has now disowned that language. In its fiscal 2006 submission to Congress, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency portrayed the test as an experiment to provide data on how the shock from a small nuclear weapon would damage hardened, underground facilities (see GSN, April 7, 2006). The government subsequently backed away from that language. Seven hundred tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil were to be detonated over an underground tunnel. The blast, much larger than any existing conventional bomb, would have sent dust billowing thousands of feet into the air. Radioactive particles from more than hundreds of nuclear tests conducted decades ago remain at the sprawling test site, but a recent government environmental study found the soil at the planned Divine Strake site had radiation levels no higher than normal background levels. The closest area where above-ground nuclear testing occurred is more than a mile away, and any danger to the public was “extremely unlikely,” the report found (see GSN, Jan. 4). Lawmakers and residents from Abandoning the test was “not based on any technical information that indicates the test would produce harm to workers, the general public or the environment,” according to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The announcement, however, does not mention precisely why Divine Strake was canceled. “I have become convinced that it’s time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test,” DTRA Director James Tegnelia said in a statement. An agency spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the reasoning for calling off the test. The agency will look for other scientific methods to replicate the data this test would have provided. It “remains committed to help develop non-nuclear means to defeat underground targets. I am optimistic that we will succeed,” Tegnelia said. On Capitol Hill, Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) and Representative Jim Matheson (D-Utah) had led opposition to the test. They represent communities that are downwind of the test site. Both applauded Thursday’s announcement. “I couldn’t be more relieved,” Hatch said in a statement. “Everybody in Still, Hatch’s office could not say what exactly motivated the cancellation. “We don’t have any insight into why they did it,” spokesman Peter Carr said. Matheson said the prospect of “even a non-nuclear mushroom cloud” over the test site would have brought back “bitter memories of how the government lied when it said that there was no danger.” Thousands of residents downwind of the site were exposed to cancer-causing radiation when dust and ash from nuclear tests fell on their communities. “If this announcement truly signals the end of Divine Strake, my hope is that DTRA would instead spend time and money on developing a conventional weapon that would actually be useful to our military in destroying deeply buried terrorist targets,” Matheson said in a statement.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
