Nuclear shots highlighted at film festival

The Department of Energy's Nevada Operations Office is hosting a film festival Wednesday to release declassified footage of nuclear tests conducted in Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi and New Mexico.

"These films document the history of the development of nuclear weapons, starting with the first bomb tested at Trinity Site, New Mexico in July 1945," Patricia Bodin, DOE's classification officer, said.

Last year several hundred people viewed previously classified nuclear weapons film footage during the DOE's Historical Nuclear Weapons Test Film Festival.

"The films are pieces of history the public hasn't seen before," Bodin said.

Most of the nuclear tests in Mississippi, Colorado and Alaska were conducted as part of the U.S. efforts to find peaceful uses for atomic blasts, called the Plowshare Program.

The free show, "Nuclear Testing Around the United States," runs from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Flamingo Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road.

The films in the series were used to provide information to the public, train workers and analyze the effects of weapons tests.

In addition, this release of films includes works showing the benefits of nuclear energy in space. Nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space and in the oceans was banned by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union in 1963.

L. Douglas Keeney, a film producer, will speak at 6:30 p.m. about how he used declassified government films to produce "America's Atom Bomb Tests."

The producer of more than 65 television documentaries and author of half dozen books, Keeney founded both Artwood Keeney, a documentary television production company and Avion Park, a publishing label.

Many of the federal government's celluloid films have been lost or destroyed, while others have been stored on dusty shelves.

The DOE began a film declassification project as part of an openness effort started in 1994. The DOE and the U.S. Department of Defense launched a cooperative effort to declassify and preserve about 6,500 films documenting early nuclear weapons history.

The DOE's Albuquerque Operations Office and Sandia National Laboratories, both in Albuquerque, N.M., are transferring old, deteriorating films, many of them still classified, to videotapes to capture the images before they are lost.

DOE's Coordination and Information Center, operated by Bechtel Nevada in North Las Vegas, serves as the distribution facility for the film declassification project.

The DOE expects to take five to seven years to complete declassification and transfer of the films.

For more information about the film declassification project, visit www.nv.doe.gov, the DOE's Nevada Operations Office website.

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