Editorial: Comment is a real bomb

Thursday, April 6, 2006 | 6:50 a.m.

Despite a Pentagon official's poor choice of words - which linked the upcoming above-ground detonation of a huge bomb at the Nevada Test Site with "a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas" - federal officials say Las Vegas Valley residents have nothing to fear from the June test.

Still, James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, created a lingering cloud of questions by saying last week that the bomb test represents "the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons (in 1963)." This is not the type of remark that sits well in a region where people were repeatedly exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests.

The bomb to be tested June 2 isn't nuclear. But it is awfully big - 700 tons of a heavy ammonium-nitrate and fuel-oil mixture that is expected to produce a blast equivalent to 593 tons of TNT. Bigger blasts have been conducted at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range. But this is to be the largest open-air chemical explosion ever conducted at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Defense Department officials are looking for a bomb that can effectively snuff underground targets, such as military headquarters and weapons stockpiles. This particular bomb offers a conventional alternative to the nuclear weapon that the Bush administration proposed and that Congress rejected.

Tegnelia later said that local residents are not likely to see, hear or feel anything. But this is a test, meaning that officials don't know what, exactly, the effects will be. Without Tegnelia's explosively thoughtless comment, the bomb might have been detonated with little - if any - public scrutiny or knowledge.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is to meet with Tegnelia today to discuss the test's objectives. But Nevadans deserve more than a report to the state's senior senator. The government should conduct public information meetings to address residents' concerns.