Nuke protesters prepare for annual Test Site vigil

Friday, April 9, 2004 | 9:33 a.m.

New York state resident Michelle Riddell decided to join demonstrators at the gateway to the Nevada Test Site today after meeting a band of 15 walkers marching along U.S. 95 to demonstrate against nuclear weapons experiments.

"I had no idea they were still testing," Riddell said of underground subcritical tests using nuclear materials that have been continuing since the nuclear weapons test ban of 1992.

The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration has been targeting nuclear materials, including plutonium, in high-explosive experiments that stop short of producing a nuclear chain reaction in a chamber 1,000 feet beneath the Test Site.

"I was really concerned about it," Riddell said. "That they are still testing is absurd."

Riddell and her 80-year-old father, Dan Driscoll, met the walking protesters in Beatty as father and daughter returned from a day trip Thursday to Death Valley, she said.

The Nevada Desert Experience, a group of religious representatives, has trekked to the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for almost 20 years to hold a vigil at the desert proving ground's entrance.

On Easter weekends, the group prays and protests at the entrance to the Test Site. Some choose to trespass on the Test Site and are cited by Nye County sheriff's deputies.

The group takes its cue from an anti-nuclear movement that began in the 1950s when nuclear testing began at the Nevada site.

In the 1980s the Test Site, one of the most secret experimental grounds of the Cold War, drew up to 3,000 demonstrators. Actor Martin Sheen, who plays a U.S. president on NBC's "The West Wing," was arrested along with singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson during those protests.

Since the 1992 moratorium, interest has waned in massive outpourings of anti-nuclear demonstrations at the Test Site.

However, the Bush administration's push to resume full-scale underground nuclear weapons testing has rekindled interest in the Test Site, said Paul Colbert, a spokesman for the Nevada Desert Experience.

The Test Site's primary mission is to stand ready to test nuclear weapons, but the Department of Energy, manager of the site, has no current plans to revive underground nuclear testing, officials said.

The 15 walkers left Las Vegas on Palm Sunday and walked the 65 miles to the site, Colbert said. They were expecting at least two vans filled with others to join the demonstration today.

Those gathered in the desert were to conduct "the nuclear stations of the cross," a step-by-step exercise that draws on Christ's suffering that leads to his crucifixion, Colbert said.

Then some protesters were expected to march across a steel cattle guard where Test Site guards and sheriff's deputies will be waiting, Colbert said. Trespassing demonstrators typically are handed a citation and released.