Nuclear weapons at Nellis

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 1997 | 9:29 a.m.

Nellis Air Force Base is home to more than a thousand nuclear weapons, making Nevada the fourth-largest nuclear repository in the country, according to an environmental group.

Of the more than 12,000 nuclear weapons remaining in 15 states after the Cold War buildup, 1,450 of them are at Nellis, northeast of Las Vegas, said the Natural Resources Defense Council.

New Mexico leads the way with 2,850 nuclear weapons stored underground.

Nellis has been a major nuclear storage area for 40 years. The NRDC said its inventory includes 1,450 weapons, 175 of them bombs and 675 air-launched cruise missiles.

"It's not surprising," said Rick Nielsen, director of Citizen Alert, an environmental watchdog group in Nevada. "No one likes to know they've got nuclear weapons stored in the neighborhood."

What Nielsen and other environmentalists wonder is what will happen to those nuclear warheads.

"Hopefully, they're in a safe place and not too close to the groundwater," Nielsen said. "I knew we had some stuff out there, but I didn't know how much."

The NRDC discovered a secret memo last week that indicates the United States is still interested in producing newer and smaller, more strategic nuclear weapons.

In the NRDC survey showing where the nukes are buried, New Mexico's stockpile includes 450 Minuteman missiles awaiting dismantlement, 365 air-launched cruise missiles and 400 ground-launched cruise missiles stored underground at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque.

Next, Georgia hosts 2,000 weapons at Kings Bay submarine base. The council, which is preparing a worldwide nuclear weapons directory, said this base houses 1,600 Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missiles, as well as 400 Trident IIs.

Washington state ranks third, with 1,600 Tridents at Bangor submarine base, with at least half the warheads on sea patrol at any given time.

For Mary Olson, director of the Nuclear Information Research Institute in Washington, D.C., the thought of all those buried bombs is "scary," but she believes it is time for the public to know.

"Clearly these things have been somewhere in the world since they were made," Olson said. "They were invisible to most people."

When the Cold War was at its height, roughly 24,000 nuclear weapons were aimed at the Soviet Union and other enemies. Since the thaw began around 1990, about 11,000 nuclear warheads have been retired, leaving 10 states that previously hosted them nuclear-free. Those states are Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and South Carolina.

After Nevada, North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base has 955 weapons, with 350 bombs and 450 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in 200 silos.