Test Site experiments, contamination secret

Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

A contamination cleanup plan for the Nevada Test Site has revealed high-explosive experiments mimicking nuclear blasts that were conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s and are still officially top secret.

The "hydronuclear" experiments occurred between 1958 and 1961, and officials are still not at liberty to discuss why they were conducted, what they proved or what type of contamination they caused.

Because the experiments are still secret, the public is unable to intelligently question their impacts, even though public hearings on the cleanup plan are held to elicit just such questions.

The secrecy prevails despite a so-called new era of openness within the Department of Energy.

Bill Andrews, who is analyzing the risks from radiation and chemicals at the Test Site for the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV, said the DOE never revealed the hydronuclear tests before its draft management plan.

"Hydronuclear tests encompass classified data, thus, cannot be addressed in this report," the plan states. "Most of the tests impacted shallow surface soils to depths less than 30 meters (98 feet). No surface soil impacts are identified at this time."

A Los Alamos National Laboratory report published in 1987 said hydronuclear experiments were conducted at Los Alamos in the laboratory and at the Nevada Test Site from 1958 to 1961, during a short moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. Fewer than 35 hydronuclear experiments were conducted at the Test Site, but the exact number is classified.

Andrews criticized the cleanup plan because anyone trying to review it cannot see the information concerning the hydronuclear tests.

"You need to write in your plan, 'We don't have the information we need,'" he said during a recent workshop at the Desert Research Institute.

During hydronuclear tests, nuclear materials are configured with high explosives in a pattern similar to a nuclear explosion. But the amount of radioactive materials and the geometry are chosen such that no nuclear chain reaction will occur when an explosive is detonated. These tests were designed to experiment with a nuclear assembly or device without actually creating a nuclear explosion.

There is a review of the secret information under way, but no details are available on those tests, said Leah Dever, project manager for the plan.

"This is under review and we are working to declassify it," DOE spokesman Darwin Morgan said. "Believe me, this is a priority."

The DOE has set a 10-year deadline for tackling cleanup at its national nuclear weapons sites and laboratories. The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, became the continental proving ground for nuclear weapons in 1951 until testing ended in 1992.

The plan also mentions a total of 930 underground nuclear tests in 41 years of operation, and 58 of them are still classified.

Another series of 22 hydronuclear experiments conducted between December 1954 and February 1956 took place at the GMX facility in Area 5 at the Test Site. These experiments tried to find out whether a nuclear reaction could ignite from an accidental explosion of weapons.

The largest ones, according to the scant information available from DOE files, were exploded on the surface in Plutonium Valley. One of four devices ignited in 1956 released a "slight nuclear yield."

Those who have reviewed the DOE's plans to contain and clear away nuclear debris at the Test Site have been critical of the federal agency's approach.

Complex groundwater flows at the Test Site, transporting radioactive wastes to the site for burial, emergency crew training and land use were also criticized by a handful of people at the workshop.