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• 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age'

You are reading from a free online e-book titled 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age.' The book discusses the Trinity test, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hydrogen bomb testing fallout, U.S. experiments done on Marshall Islanders (Project 4.1), the Irene Allen trial, Cosmos 954, the Fukushima meltdowns, Three Mile Island updates, and so much more. Visit the Table of Contents to find this free content.

Footnotes are located at the end of each chapter - press the (right facing) 'PAGE' button icon until you reach the footnotes page, or locate it via the table of contents

On September 6, 1979, the DOE carried out shot 'Hearts,' a 140-kiloton underground nuclear blast intended to create a shock environment to 'destroy' those two unexploded devices, both located in nearby underground test shafts.  'Hearts' was not intended to explode the devices but rather somehow render them safe, or safer.  Hearts was 'successful' at destroying 'Transom,' but it took another nuclear blast dubbed 'Azul' on December 14, 1979 to 'destroy' the Peninsula device. (Azul's yield was 'less than 20 kt'.)    

It is very difficult to believe that the DOE has 'closed the case' on these two unexploded nuclear bomb devices, or even other partially unexploded nuclear bombs underneath the Nevada floor.  After the Transom device failed to produce any nuclear yield, the DOE announced to the Associated Press in 1978 that there was 'no possibility of any additional explosion.' So, what was the reason for 'Hearts'?  And how does the DOE definitively know that that the unexploded bombs were 'terminated'?   Transom was estimated to produce a 20 to 150 kiloton yield and Peninsula would have produced a blast less than 20 kilotons. 

Could these devices or other unexploded masses of atomic device material - sometimes called nuclear UXO, or unexploded ordnance - blow up beneath the Nevada desert?  There is some debate regarding unexploded nuclear bombs - i.e., one off the coast of Georgia, another off the seabed near Thule, Greenland - over whether or not supercriticality, the condition that's ripe for a runaway, explosive chain reaction, could occur.  Supercriticality is the mushroom-cloud, nuclear-explosive result of a runaway chain reaction of atomic disintegrations in a critical mass of fissionable material resulting from an extraordinarily rich environment of neutrons.  Even if supercriticality isn't reached in a nuclear 'pile,' fission can occur at a slower rate (than a nuclear explosion) and produce quantities of radioactive products of basically the same concentrations (over time).   So, at least it is possible that unexploded critical masses of nuclear bomb material located below the Earth's surface can emit radioactive gasess via re-criticality that could seep up to the ocean or ground surface with uncertain impacts on human health and our food chain.  

For reasons we discuss in Chapter 10, there is plenty of reason to believe that most of the nearly 900 underground nuclear tests at the former Nevada Test Site resulted in slight or even great increases in off-site surface contamination of cesium-137 and strontium-90 as the result of the decay of released gasses krypton-90 and xenon-137. 

Present day activities

Underground testing was limited - by yield - in 1976 when the Threshold Test Ban Treaty²⁶ went into effect, which capped nuclear tests by the U.S. and the Soviets at 150 kilotons.  Nuclear testing was banned altogether in 1992 - the last NTS nuclear test was on September 23, 1992 - when the U.S. initiated a moratorium on all nuclear testing.  For three years, that moratorium was annually revisited and renewed by Congress despite opposition from the Pentagon and Republican Senators (who, to this day, still want to conduct weapons effects and weapons design nuclear tests at the NNSS).  In 1996, the CTBT was signed and the U.S. has since behaved as if that treaty was in effect (although there is no way to verify if their subcritical tests comply with zero-yield restrictions of the treaty.)

Subcrits

Since 1997, the NTS - now NNSS - has been host to subcritical experiments, and also hydrodynamic plutonium experiments, which are tests that subject plutonium to extreme temperatures and high pressure shock waves.  At the U1a facility, NNSS personnel conduct Large Bore Powder Gun experiments and imaging (CYGNUS radiography) experiments, both involving plutonium and other nuclear materials.  The large-bore powder guns would be used to fire large projectiles into 'fixed special nuclear material targets.'  The NNSA has not specified the number of these types of subcritical experiments that will be conducted annually.   Shock physics experiments on plutonium also occur at the Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research Facility (JASPER).²⁷ More on our subcritical page.

Divine Strake

In early June 2006, the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) had planned - but was thwarted in its attempts by citizen protests and a lawsuit - to conduct Divine Strake, a conventional explosives test designed to assess the bunker-busting ability of a low-yield nuclear weapon.  Divine Strake, which was planned for an area of the Nevada Test Site that is contaminated with radioactive particles deposited from several 1950s above-ground nuclear tests, was twice postponed, then cancelled in February 2007.  In the DTRA's press statement announcing the test's cancellation, the DTRA expressed its intent to conduct smaller 'confirmatory experiments' - believed to be small-scale surface explosions at the same or adjacent location - instead of Divine Strake.  The DTRA has not mentioned that they would complete environmental studies to ensure that its tests pose no risk to those downwind or give prior notification.  Moreover, the language in the DTRA's February 2007 press release does not specify what they mean by experiments that are 'smaller' than Divine Strake, which entailed 700-tons of conventional explosives. Is the DTRA planning several 3-ton tests, or 30-ton tests, or perhaps a single 600-ton test at the NNSS?  All three scenarios are not out of the realm of possibility since they all would technically be 'smaller' than the 700-ton Divine Strake test.  According to the NTS Ten Year Site Plan, DTRA uses many miles of tunnels at the site 'to conduct experiments and training in support of hard/deeply buried target location and defeat, conventional munitions demilitarization, and other experiments and testing.'  (See www.stopdivinestrake.com and our oped 'The Un-killable Nevada Bomb Test' for more about 'Divine Strake' and her babies)

More blasting

Other surface blasting occurs at the NNSS's Big Explosives Experimental Facility, or BEEF, located in Area 4.  BEEF hosts small explosives tests - up to about 3.5 tons - in both open-air and enclosed large bunkers called 'containment vessels.'  The BEEF, which also hosts experiments on depleted uranium, is located just a short distance, about one kilometer, from Area T-4, the site of four atmospheric nuclear bomb tests and significant subsurface contamination.  Shockingly, BEEF testing may be shaking the ground (a shock wave can be seen in the accompanying picture) at area T-4, which is not cleaned up, and may resuspend the radioactive matter to be carried off-site by winds.  (In 2009 the DOE Environmental Management agreed with the State of Nevada to close, instead of fully remediate, the T-4 area.)²⁸

Although not intended to host any sort of explosion, the 'Device Assembly Facility' at the NNSS, a taxpayer blackhole that was never fully used for its intention to dismantle warheads, is designed to collapse in on itself to form a 'radioactivity seal' in the event that a nuclear bomb accidentally goes off.

Waste storage

Although Yucca is dead, nuclear waste storage in shallow and also (mostly) unlined trenches is a mainstay of the 'NNSS economy'.  Trucks hauling nuclear waste from other government operations across the U.S. converge at the NNSS almost daily.  These trucks are constantly emitting gamma radiation into the environment on our roads and rest stops.  Read more on our waste and storage page.

Many of the activities of the DOE in Nevada are carried out by contractors.  NNSS offsite monitoring efforts are contracted to the Desert Research Institute and onsite work is contracted out to a consortium of corporations called NSTec.²⁹

Wildfires

In early July 2011, lightning caused two wildfires to flare up on the NNSS. The 'Weston Fire', which burned about 1,300 acres, was the smaller of the two and contained before the 'Timber Fire' (which was located several miles north) was finally under control by the second week of July. The 'Timber Fire' burned through roughly three to four thousand acres of Areas 18 and 30 of the "NNSS." Area 18 was the site of 5 nuclear weapons tests - 4 aboveground in 1962 and 1 underground in 1964 - and thus has surface radiological contamination.³⁰ Also, Area 30 was home to "Project Buggy" - a nuclear excavation experiment - and the "Bossy" nuclear test.

Dante Pistone, spokesman for the NNSS's operations center, told the Las Vegas Review Journal for an article that appeared on July 9, 2011, that the Timber Fire was miles away from any test site, not moving in that direction, and although the air was being monitored for radioactivity, the threat didn't even require firefighters to wear radiation protection equipment. Regarding the radiation situation, stated Pistone: 'It's of no concern to us.' However, the NNSS hasn't been adequately surveyed for surface contamination since the early 1990s, and baseline conditions have changed (due to migration of radioisotopes from natural forces and manmade activities). So, hotspots could have been located miles from the test sites, meaning in the fire-scorched areas. Since data from the monitoring network in the NNSS is kept secret and monitoring equipment capability in offsite areas is inferior to what was used for monitoring even in the 1940s, there is no way to know what Westerners breathed in from the July 2011 fires at the former Nevada Test Site.

   

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