Radiation research tests the remnants of long nuke history

By Mary Manning

Sunday, Jan. 24, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

Nevada has a 41-year history with nuclear experiments less than 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and researchers are still wrestling with the consequences.

The United States began experimenting with nuclear weapons underground in June 1946 in the Pacific Islands. The experimenting continued until a moratorium was imposed in 1992 at the Nevada Test Site.

Testing began in Nevada in 1951. Government scientists conducted above-ground and underground nuclear blasts for more than 12 years at the Test Site until a test ban treaty was signed with the Soviet Union. Above-ground blasts were then stopped.

Underground tests to determine peaceful purposes for atomic explosions were conducted in the 1960s in central and northwestern Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Mississippi and one of the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska.

There have been 921 underground U.S. nuclear tests conducted in 878 shafts and tunnels on the Nevada Test Site, a report released last week shows.

Department of Energy information about the Test Site had been kept secret until the 1990s. Nuclear physicist Anthony Hechanova spent four years at the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV going through the DOE records. He compiled the report that details what went on during the 41 years of testing.

Hechanova found that 260 underground nuclear experiments had been conducted at or below the Test Site's ground-water table. It is those tests that concern scientists cleaning up the contamination from the blasts because they fear radiation may be moving in the underground streams toward populated areas.

During the testing days, people throughout the country protested, sometimes by massing at the gates of the Test Site. Residents of neighboring Utah were especially upset by the above-ground tests and their radioactive clouds of fallout drifting from the Nevada Test Site into their communities.

In 1989, at the request of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the Office of Technology Assessment started evaluating government practices to contain and monitor nuclear testing.

The Office of Technology report, which took six months and was the first in-depth public look at the government nuclear experiments, noted that everything changed after the unexpected release of 54,000 curies of radiation into the air during the 1970 underground Baneberry blast.

Baneberry, named after a desert shrub that produces white berries, exposed 900 workers. The families of two security guards filed a lawsuit claiming that the guards died from the radiation exposure. After more than 10 years in federal court, the claims were denied.

After Baneberry, a Containment Evaluation Panel was created with much stricter guidelines on containing underground nuclear experiments.

If a person stood at the Test Site's border in the path of maximum radiation since Baneberry, "that person's total exposure would be equivalent to one one-thousandths of a single chest X-ray," the Office of Technology report said.

About 90 percent of all nuclear explosions were blasted up to a mile underground in vertical holes drilled into Yucca Flat. Built-in safeguards made chances of an accidental release "as remote as possible," the report said.

Distrust of the DOE rose with its reluctance to disclose information on tests, the report said.

Also, not all leaks or seeps were announced. In 1988, the Office of Technology reported about 100 underground nuclear devices were blasted in ground water.

About 22 wells on-site and 29 wells off-site were tested monthly. Employees with the DOE's contractor, the former Reynolds Electric & Engineering Co., sampled on-site while the federal Environmental Protection Agency checked off-site wells.

The report estimated the ground water flowed between 10 and 600 feet a year. Currently there is no public information on where the most rapid travel might be occurring.