Victims to mark NTS anniversary

Friday, Jan. 26, 2001 | 11:34 a.m.

As Energy Department workers recall 50 years of nuclear weapons experiments at the Nevada Test Site on Saturday, residents and military veterans who lived and worked under the radioactive fallout plan demonstrations in Las Vegas and Utah.

Nevada's role in the U.S. nuclear weapons buildup left a bittersweet trail.

Residents of Nevada, Arizona and Utah -- calling themselves "Downwinders" -- sued the government as family members suffered cancers and died after radioactive clouds drifted away from the Test Site. They lost their hard-fought case after the government appealed a judge's ruling in 1984.

Utah ranchers lost more than 5,000 cattle after a series of atomic experiments in Nevada in 1953. Test Site workers also filed suit and lost their case after more than 15 years in court and an appeal in April 1996.

Congress last year passed a bill that provides compensation for nuclear workers after the DOE admitted those building and testing nuclear weapons were harmed by radiation and toxic chemicals.

Many Test Site workers and their families will spend Saturday recalling a half-century of testing the nuclear arsenal at the remote site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where more than 1,000 above- and below-ground nuclear experiments exploded from 1951 until 1992.

The first nuclear blast packed a punch equal to 1,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear device, codenamed "Able," was dropped from a plane 50 years ago Saturday onto Frenchman Flat in the southeast corner of the Test Site. It was the seventh U.S. nuclear test.

The first U.S. atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico's desert in 1945, then experiments moved to the Pacific islands until President Harry Truman ordered the Nevada proving ground opened in 1951.

Up to 100,000 people worked at the Test Site, with more than 12,000 of them there in the late 1970s. Today there are about 3,000 government and contract employees.

The Test Site was considered the second largest employer, behind the mining industry, in those days, DOE records say.

Workers labored in secrecy at the remote site, not even telling their families about nuclear activities, but others remember the radioactive fallout and its effects from the atomic mushroom clouds.

The Nevada Desert Experience, an interfaith group opposed to nuclear weapons, and the Alliance of Atomic Veterans, representing military personnel who stood under the atomic mushroom clouds, kick off activities today.

The alliance has a free forum at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd., one block east of Pecos Road, said Anthony Guarisco, who helped found the alliance 19 years ago.

A panel discussion with those exposed to fallout, including survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, is scheduled.

Despite the government's apology and its openness in releasing millions of pages of formerly secret documents on the nuclear testing, Guarisco said not much has changed. "And it looks pretty bleak," he said, noting that the federal government could resume nuclear testing in Nevada, if necessary.

"But we can never forget the men and women who gave their lives there," Guarisco said.

The Nevada Desert Experience scheduled a rally at noon Saturday at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site, where Operation Ranger, the first series of atmospheric nuclear tests in the United States, was triggered 50 years ago, said spokesman Charles Hilfenhaus.

In Utah, Gov. Mike Leavitt and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson have declared Saturday a "day of remembrance," honoring residents who live downwind of the Test Site.

Both Utah officials issued formal proclamations this week on behalf of nuclear fallout victims, Preston Truman, a founder of the Downwinders, said.