The Fallout Before a Bomb Test

Will a 10,000-foot cloud of dust from a massive bomb spread radioactive particles across the West? It sounds like a nightmare scenario from the 1950s. But thats the question a U.S. district court in Las Vegas will seek to resolve next month.

A Western Shoshone Indian tribe and representatives of two Salt Lake citizens groups have filed suit against the U.S. Defense Department to stop the June 2 detonation of a 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The test, announced by the Pentagon on April 4, and dubbed "Divine Strake," is designed to determine how a bomb might penetrate fortified underground bunkers. It will be the biggest open-air chemical blast ever conducted at the Nevada Test site — 280 times more powerful than the explosion that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. "The concern of downwind communities is Here we go again," said plaintiff Stephen Erickson of the Salt Lake City-based Citizens Education Project. Though not a nuclear test, Erickson is afraid the huge blast "could kick up radioactive dust from previous nuclear testing," and claims "the Pentagon has sprung it on everybody with no examination of its effects."

Nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada site from 1951 to 1992 is alleged to have caused tens of thousands of cancers in residents of Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Idaho. Although the findings are disputed, the 1990 federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act provided compassionate payments to some victims. In announcing the test, James Tegnelia, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, told reporters the blast "is the first time in Nevada that youll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons." Later, after a rebuke from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Tegnelia retracted the description. A Pentagon spokesman said the test would occur at least three miles from areas of known radioactive contamination and that the cloud would not be visible from Las Vegas. But Reid and other Congressional critics expressed dismay about the possible fallout. "Im concerned that tests of this magnitude have been planned without providing Nevadans with any information about the possible impact on their health or safety," Reid said last month.

The lawsuit, filed last week, demands that the Defense Department publish its plans in the Federal Register, provide the opportunity for public comment and conduct a full environmental impact statement on the effect of the explosion. "The Department of Defense appears to have learned nothing from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and the devastating deaths caused to nuclear veterans and downwinders by atmospheric nuclear testing," the suit contends. The June 2 explosion, it added, would contaminate Native American land, "making it unfit for millions of years for an use by the Western Shoshone people or any other human beings." A Defense Department statement, however, declared, "No adverse impact on the environment or health of exercise participants or local residents is anticipated."