Test Site could be lab for fake quakes

Monday, Aug. 30, 1999 | 3:06 a.m.

The Nevada Test Site will become a life-size laboratory for simulating earthquakes over the next five years if Congress approves $50 million in funds this fall.

Called the Nevada Seismic Testing Center, the full-scale operation has carved out 1.2 square miles from Area 5 in the southeast corner of the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The U.S. Department of Energy and its manager, Bechtel Nevada, are searching for alternative uses for the site that sprawls across an area the size of Rhode Island, Bechtel's Peter Mote told a meeting of the Nevada Earthquake Safety Council at the Desert Research Institute on Friday. A U.S. nuclear weapons test ban has been in place since 1992.

Not only the federal government, but universities from Nevada, California, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky and Maine as well as European countries and Japan are interested in seeing the earthquake research center built, Mote said. He is on loan from Bechtel and set up the Nevada Testing Institute to boost support for the project.

Last year 12 small quake simulation tests were conducted, seven at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California and five at the Test Site. UNLV civil and environmental engineer Barbara Luke studied the chemistry of soils before and after the tests.

Government and private researchers are interested in how bridges, buildings, pipelines and underground tanks react in earthquakes. Current testing usually involves a tankful of chemicals on a shake table, ending in a mess in the scientists' laboratories when the container breaks open.

The center at the Test Site would allow an actual field experiment, Mote said.

For a full-scale test a 150-foot square test bed would be built surrounded by a 50-foot-deep trench. Two canisters filled with explosives would be buried within the bed, detonated and cause the ground to rock. Mote said any size earthquake from a magnitude 7.0 to smaller ones can be triggered at the proposed facility.

When the center is completed, a circle of test beds of various sizes may be used by universities, industries or other countries to stress structures under quake-like conditions.

In a scene straight from Hollywood, researchers are talking about building a dam in one of the Test Site's dry washes, then testing it to the limit with a simulated quake to see when the structure might collapse.

Closer to home, Nevada seismologists plan to keep a closer eye on Southern Nevada's earthquake activity. A magnitude 5.7 temblor 220 miles northwest of Las Vegas on Aug. 1 rattled Southern Nevada residents, as well as the china and guests at the Death Valley Hotel, where visitors ran out of their rooms in their underwear.

The biggest threat to Las Vegas is the Death Valley earthquake faults that run parallel to the state line in Southern Nevada, Nevada Seismological Laboratory Director John Anderson said. Nevada is the third most seismically active state, behind California and Alaska.

A large earthquake on the Death Valley faults -- one as great as Turkey's 7.4 magnitude disaster -- would damage Las Vegas, Anderson said.

"I worry the most about a quake there for its effect on Las Vegas," Anderson said after the meeting.

After a Sept. 14, 1995, Mexico City quake, the seismologist surveyed the damages. One- and two-story buildings remained standing after the 7.3 magnitude quake, he said.

"It was the 10- and 15-story high rises that collapsed," Anderson said.

The Death Valley faults and their impacts on Southern Nevada have not been studied enough. From what little is known, a major quake of 6.0 magnitude or larger can occur there every 1,000 years or so, University of Nevada, Reno emeritus seismologist Bert Slemmons said.

Congress is expected to approve funds to place 300 quake sensors in Nevada, 200 in Northern Nevada and 100 in Las Vegas.

Then if a major Death Valley temblor strikes, Las Vegas may get a few seconds of warning, Anderson said.

"There's a lot of work to do to prepare for an earthquake here," Anderson said.