Test Site’s next 50 years to focus on new research

Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2000 | 3:15 a.m.

After 41 years of exploding atomic bombs in the desert, Nevada Test Site managers are focusing on cutting-edge science that puts the power of a laboratory on a microchip smart enough to monitor toxins underground.

Kathleen Carlson, the Department of Energy's Test Site manager, said more research projects are heading Nevada's way as the role of the old proving ground 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas undergoes a renaissance from producing radioactive fallout to research and renewable energy.

The DOE celebrated President Harry Truman's signing of a letter 50 years ago Monday that created the Test Site for continental nuclear weapons experiments as the Korean War raged. Hostilities in the Pacific threatened nuclear tests on remote islands that had become too expensive for the United States to continue.

For the coming half century, the DOE is forming partnerships with national weapons labs, the University of Nevada and the Desert Research Institute.

DRI is the site of the future Nevada Atomic Testing Institute, where nuclear records and equipment will be displayed, Carlson said.

The Test Site is already creating a vision of its future before the museum, which will be affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, is built, she said.

The DOE's Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico has created micro-sensors small enough to go underground and monitor poisonous chemicals or radiation in ground water and soils, Carlson said.

"Sandia is automating a laboratory on a chip," she said, noting that in the next three to five years the Test Site will host field experiments using those microchips.

In addition, scientists are learning how plutonium behaves in existing nuclear weapons. The Test Site has hosted 12 subcritical experiments in the past two years, testing minute amounts of radioactive bomb materials without causing a nuclear chain reaction. And bigger projects are coming.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., secured the funding last month for another high-powered experiment known as Atlas. The Atlas project, to be transferred from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to the Test Site, is designed to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe. The Atlas tests metals used in such weapons.

Another project, a big gas gun known as JASPER, will continue looking at what happens to weapons materials during explosions.

Although the Test Site's primary mission is to stand ready to test nuclear weapons, the DOE does not plan to revive underground testing, Carlson said. Former President George Bush halted nuclear weapons tests in 1992. Still, no one can know if nuclear experiments will return, Carlson said.

For Air Force Gen. John Gordon, the new leader of the National Nuclear Security Administration, such sophisticated science projects at the Test Site will mean the chances of renewed full-scale nuclear weapons experiments will remain low.

"Our goal is not to test, but we are charged with maintaining the capability to do so if the president ever orders it," Gordon said.

"We don't know what the world will bring us or what science will bring us," he said.

Congress established the National Nuclear Security Administration on March 1. Gordon has been on the job since July.

"I think in establishing the NNSA, Congress is looking for solid footing at the Nevada Test Site for the next 50 years," Gordon said in remarks to more than 250 officials and former Test Site workers gathered at the site of the new museum at Flamingo Road and Swenson Avenue.

Corporations are also interested in using the Test Site. The NTS Development Corp. has attracted six companies interested in relocating to the Test Site, corporate director Tim Carlson said. From Fluid Tech, a small company devoted to environmental cleanup, to Kistler Aerospace, a firm that wants to launch retrievable space shuttles from the site, each is willing to live under constraints.

If a president renewed nuclear testing, the companies would be prepared to evacuate during the experiment, Carlson said. "That's what happened with previous contractors," he said. Other companies developing renewable energy projects, even a wind farm, are interested in the Test Site.