Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Plans for big boom back

The boom is back.

But so is the opposition to a planned 700-ton explosion at the Nevada Test Site.

"These people must be breathing in the fumes from former nuclear bomb blasts at the Nevada Test Site if they think this is a done deal," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Rejecting other potential test sites or abandoning the project altogether, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is again planning a massive explosion at the Test Site as part of an effort to develop "bunker busting" bombs. The agency, which handles nuclear, biological and chemical military research for the Defense Department, said in May that the test would be postponed "indefinitely."

On Wednesday agency Director James Tegnelia briefed congressmen and their staffs from several states - notably omitting Nevada - and said the blast was back on.

But the concerns that prompted protests, a pending federal lawsuit and international scrutiny remain unresolved. Opponents are concerned that the blast co uld kick up radioactive dust from previous above- and below-ground nuclear explosions at the Test Site.

Robert Hager, attorney for the "downwinders" suing to stop the test known as Divine Strake, said there is nothing new in the program. He said the federal environmental analysis is not examining the effect of radioactive dust on people downwind.

"It's got the same flaws that have existed since Day One," he said. "The only thing that has happened in the meantime is that there has been an election. Other than that, they (federal officials) are on the same course."

Federal Judge Lloyd George has set a February meeting for a status review of the project, but Hager said the opposition will expedite its legal effort given the Defense Department's new holiday-heavy timeline, which predicts a final decision in mid-January.

Tegnelia, in his briefing, told congressmen that the possible exposure to radiation from the test would be "20 times less than allowed by federal regulations" and "2,000 times less than a single chest x-ray," according to documents from the briefing provided to the Sun.

Further, the dust at the Test Site boundary in Nye and Lincoln counties would be "1,000 times lower" than the level allowed by the federal Clean Air Act.

The Energy Department, which runs the Test Site, is providing data and documents to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. Kevin Rohrer, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, said the information required by the state will be delivered.

"We adhere to the same standards that everybody else does," he said. The Test Site has an existing air-quality permit, but that permit needs to be updated when there is a significant project planned.

"When you do new work, you have to provide additional data or analysis demonstrating compliance To date we have provided the state with some information but there is additional information they are looking for."

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency issued a short statement that does not include a date for the planned blast, but promised that an environmental analysis would be available for public comment.

"After comments are considered, DTRA and the National Nuclear Security Administration will decide whether to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement or issue a finding of no significant impact."

Spokeswoman Irene Smith said the agency would have no other immediate comment.

The congressional briefing, however, included a timetable that said a revised environmental analysis - not the extensive EIS process that can take several years - will come early next month and a 30-day public comment period will begin after it is released. A final decision will come in mid-January, according to the agency's "expected sequence of events."

Congresswoman Berkley said the expectation might be premature.

"They have not complied with state regulations, there are no permits from the state or federal government, they haven't begun the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) federal process, and we have not had a public comment period," she said. "They have done absolutely nothing."

Berkley and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, have been skeptical about the federal government's plans since Tegnelia announced in March the blast would send a "mushroom cloud over Las Vegas" for the first time since the United States ended nuclear explosions at the Test Site in 1992. The comment ignited immediate and sustained criticism from American Indian groups, especially Shoshones who argue that the Test Site is part of their ancestral lands, and downwinders in Nevada and Utah who believe they and their families have suffered disease from exposure to nuclear testing.

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide group fighting Divine Strake, said she doesn't believe the federal assurances that the impact will be minimal. She said the government made similar claims about the impact of above-ground nuclear testing.

"How can we believe anything they are saying? That's the bottom line," Johnson said. "I hate to say it, but do I trust the government? No, I don't. We really cannot trust them."

Nationally, too, there is opposition, including from Robert Nelson, a physicist working with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has opposed Bush administration proposals to expand the range of possible uses for nuclear weapons.

"There's no question this is a simulation of a nuclear explosion," Nelson said. "It's the only thing it could be. The highest yield conventional weapon we have is the MOAB, which is 20,000 pounds ... They are not simulating a conventional weapon."

U.S. policy has always been that a nuclear weapon was "the weapon of last resort," he said. "We didn't think of them as being first strike, battlefield weapons. The real concern of UCS and others in the arms-control community is that you are expanding the use of nuclear weapons into nontraditional areas."

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project for the Federation of Atomic Scientists, said he isn't sure whether the information gathered from the Divine Strake test would go into the development of any particular weapon, nuclear or conventional.

"Whether this means there is something new that they can use it for, or this is just generic information for them, is not very clear," Kristensen said. "It's still very murky. It's probably generic (information). It may not be for a particular weapon system, but they will have it in their databank."

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