SPECIAL INSERT
Summaries From Some CLUI Site Characterizations
New Mexico: Land of Enchantment
and Hi-Tech R&D. From the birth of the Nuclear Age at Trinity
Site to modern explosives development at NM Tech, this state,
home of two out of three National Labs, is perhaps foremost
in the nation in creative high-impact land use.
Cannon
Air Force Base
Holloman Air Force Base
Fort Bliss
Roswell Army Airbase
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology
Los Alamos National Lab
Gnome Nuclear Test Site
White Sands Missile Range
Trinity Site
Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site
Kirtland AFB
Phillips Laboratory
The Department of Energy's Albuquerque
Operations Center
Sandia National Laboratory
National Atomic Museum
Cannon Air Force Base, located in eastern New Mexico, is a 4,500
acre facility which has a population of over 10,000 people.
Established in 1942, the base is now home for tactical fighter
wings.
Holloman Air Force Base sits on the edge of the White Sands
Missile Range, near Alamagordo, and uses some of the Range for
a practice bombing. Holloman is home of a stealth fighter (F-117)
group, and is considered one of the more vital Air Force Bases
in the country. Traffic between Holloman and the black-budget
test facility at Nevada's Groom Lake, run by the Air Force and
the CIA, is reportedly heavy. There is also a biological laboratory
on Holloman, which includes a complex known as the Advanced
Primate Research Biocontainment Facility.
Fort Bliss is an Army training facility and home of an artillery
brigade and an armored calvary regiment. Though headquartered
in El Paso, Texas, the base includes a 1.1 million acre range,
most of which is in New Mexico and shares a border with the
Army's White Sands Missile Range.
Roswell Army Airbase is now a municipal air field, but is famous
for being associated with a legendary UFO crash. It was here,
in 1947, that material from an alleged crashed alien craft was
brought and examined by several people before the incident was
hushed-up and the material was taken away by military authorities.
Several witnesses claim to have handled the metallic material,
and stated that it posessed very unique elastic properties.
There are also witnesses that attest to seeing injured alien
beings at the crash site.
In 1994, partially responding to the continuing
barrage of expensive Freedom of Information Act requests from
UFO researchers, the Air Force released previously classified
documents that they say explains the event. According to the
documents, the object that crashed there was part of Project
Mogul, a program to monitor the atmosphere for vibrations that
might indicate a Soviet nuclear test. As part of this project
ballons with sensors and metallic reflectors were to be deployed
from points around the nation. The tendency of the ballons to
come down to earth in unsecured locations, like the one that
crashed near Roswell, was part of what led to the projects discontinuation
in 1950. Back To Top
In the plains of Saint Agustin, west of Socorro, is the Very
Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, part of the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory, one of the most powerful radio telescopes
in the world. The VLA consists of 27 82-foot radio dishes that
can be moved on tracks to cover an area as large as 20 by 20
miles. The antennas are linked together to form a single image
of the radio source being studied. The facility was constructed
from 1974 to 1982 by the National Science Foundation. As part
of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), information
from the VLA is combined with that from other NRAO facilities
at Green Bank, West Virginia, Tucson, Arizona, and the main
office at Charlottesville Virginia.
For a typical experiment the dishes are configured
to track a distant astronomical entity, one which emits radio
signals, for a designated amount of time, from several hours
to several days. These signals are picked up by the collector
dishes, amplified and transmitted to the control building through
underground wave guides. The amplifiers in each dish are cooled
to -427 degrees F, just slightly warmer than absolute zero,
to reduce the amount of noise they produce. The wave guides
are precision-made pipes 60 millimeters wide which steer the
cosmic radio waves to the computer processors with minimal loss
or distortion. The signals are then converted into data and
are stored in computers. The experimenters, who have usually
waited for years for this brief window of data-collection, take
the computerized data, stored on magnetic tapes, back to their
institution to be analyzed and interpreted for months and even
years into the future.
The VLA is also part of the Very Long Baseline
Array antenna, composed of ten 82-foot collectors spread out
across the USA from the Virgin Islands to Hawaii, working together
to form a radio antenna 5000 miles in diameter. Information
from this configuration is collected from each site on magnetic
tape and sent to the Array Operations Center at the New Mexico
Institute of Mining and Technology, in Socorro.
However, to most UFO enthusiasts,
the release of this information is seen as just another attempt
by the government to conceal the truth, and has only deepend
their convictions about a continued government cover-up of the
alien presence. There is a UFO museum in Roswell which continues
to cater to the thousands of faithful who make the pilgrimage
to Roswell every year. Back
To Top
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the first major nuclear
waste disposal facility to be built in the United States, and
so far also the only one. This Department of Energy (DOE) facility
east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, is designed to only test and prove
the viability of the disposal of nuclear waste in a geologic
repository, and is not being built to be a final disposal site
(though it is generally believed that once waste is located
there that it will stay for quite some time). The Plant was
constructed in the early 1980's and has been largely finished
since 1988. Constructed at this facility is a mile long corridor
2,150 feet underground, off of which are several chambers for
tests and interim waste storage. There are 30 or so support
structures at the surface, in a secure zone covering over 10,000
acres.
WIPP is awaiting environmental and political approval,
before accepting its first shipment of trans-uranic (TRU) waste.
All the waste destined for WIPP is from other DOE and military
sites (none of it is commercial nuclear waste--that is slated
for Yucca Mountain, Nevada), and is comprised of mostly irradiated
laboratory material, such as gloves, protective clothing, and
other disposable test equipment.
The repository is built in a salt dome (a massive
underground salt deposit) as it was assumed that this type of
geologic structure would be more stable than any other. In this
type of underground environment, the salt is expected to slowly
encroach on the waste material, surrounding it and isolating
it from the atmosphere and ground water. Studies so far have
both supported and criticized this hypothesis, and many believe
that the waste could breach this entombment within the 24,000
years needed for the plutonium contamination to decay to safe
levels. In any event, it is proving difficult to anticipate
conditions that far into the future, as evidenced by the results
of the team of experts that was assembled by Sandia National
Lab to design a "keep out" sign for WIPP that would
remain legible for 10,000 years. Back
To Top
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, also called New
Mexico Tech, is a technical university and is part of the state
university system. Though enrollment is only around 1,600, NM
Tech is significant as the parent organization for several major
research and development institutions: the Langmuir Laboratory
for Atmospheric Research, the Energetic Materials Research and
Testing Center, the Geophysical Research Center, the Bureau
of Mines and Mineral Resources and the Petroleum Research and
Recovery Center.
The largest of these
is the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC),
an agency dedicated to research and development of explosive
materials. This facility is one of the foremost explosion effects
research laboratories in the world. The 32-square-mile field
laboratory contains a hypervelocity light gas gun facility,
a 20-foot diameter shock tube, a rocket sled ordnance test track,
and a number of other gun firing ranges and explosive test facilities.
Tests involving mock-ups of airplanes bombed by terrorists have
been perform, along with much defense related explosive research,
as their promotional literature states:
Several of the
test ranges are set up to support various large- and small-scale
explosive experiments, fragment projector experiments, warhead
characterization tests, large and small caliber gun firings
such as fuze evaluations, insensitive munitions (IM) testing,
target response to single and multiple impacts, vulnerability
assessment experiments, fragment or debris distribution studies,
tactical rocket firings, vehicle and running engine experiments,
and other specialized experiments. These test sites are located
in terrain-sheltered areas that limit fragment dispersion, blast
effects, noise, and provide security for proprietary or classified
experiments. All test sites are equipped with proximate field
facilities with adequate instrumentation, bunkers, personnel
safety shelters, and electrical power as may be required for
field testing.
Some 40 companies and state agencies are involved
in testing programs at the EMRTC including the Defense Nuclear
Agency (DNA) and the National labs. The EMRTC was recently formed
by consolidating the Center for Explosives Testing and Research
(CETR) and the Terminal Effects Research and Analysis (TERA)
facility. TERA has been active at its test range west of Socorro
since 1949.
The Geophysical Research Center, another agency
operated by NM Tech, directs research in atmospheric physics
and chemistry, hydrology and seismology. One of the Center's
key facilities is the Wood's Tunnel Seismic Observatory, a seismological
test chamber located in Socorro Peak, west of the Main Campus.
Also, operated by NM Tech is the Petroleum Research and Recovery
Center, one of the world's premier oil recovery strategy labs,
and the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research. The Langmuir
Lab specializes in lightning, cloud physics, and water chemistry
research, and is known for its storm-chasing scientists who
fly into violent thunderstorms to take measurements in a heavily
equipped Schwiezer aircraft. Next to the Langmuir Lab in the
Magdalena Mountains, 17 miles southwest of the NM Tech campus,
is the Joint Observatory for Cometary Research, operated by
NM Tech, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This twin-domed
observatory conducts research related to comets and other astronomical
phenomena.
Back To Top
Los Alamos National Lab is one of the three principal diversified
Department of Energy research and development facilities, along
with Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs. Like Lawrence
Livermore, Los Alamos is operated by the University of California.
It employs around 10,000 people, occupies 43 square miles, and
consumes around a billion dollars per year. The lab was established
in 1943 as "Project Y" in the Manhattan Engineer District,
the headquarters of the Manhattan Project, which developed the
first atomic bomb (tested at White Sands Missile Range, 150
miles south of Los Alamos). Most of the Lab facilities from
that era are gone, though the spectacular main hall of the Los
Alamos Ranch School (which was bought out and taken over by
the Manhattan Project) remains, restored and open to the public.
The hall is part of Fuller Lodge, which was used as the guest
and dining quarters for the labs VIP's.
After the war, the lab began moving much of its
operations out of the town of Los Alamos to nearby mesas. With
the labs sprawling into an even more remote site, separated
from the town by a narrow bridge, the town was eventually opened
to normal commercial development. Research continued and facilities
expanded with the pursuit of the hydrogen, or "thermonuclear"
bomb (finally tested in 1952), nuclear rocket programs, and
further nuclear weapons development and testing. Los Alamos
Lab continues to pursue military and nuclear research and development,
field testing its technologies at its secure and heavily contaminated
test facilities near Los Alamos, on the Pajarito Plateau (and
also, along with Lawrence Livermore and Sandia, at the Nevada
Test Site).
The future of Los Alamos is dependent to some
degree on the future of the Department of Energy, presently
somewhat up in the air. Though it might face some changes, it
is unlikely to be abandoned. It will most likely continue, in
its own words, "...to investigate a multitude of phenomena
that extend from the earth's interior through its atmosphere
and magnetosphere into outer space, from subnuclear particles
to galaxies, from events occurring in trillionths of a second
to those that take thousands of centuries, and from temperatures
near absolute zero to those measured in tens of millions of
degrees" (Los Alamos literature).
The Bradbury Museum, located conspicuously in
town, is the information center and science museum operated
by the lab, and contains many interesting exhibits and displays.
Back To Top
The Gnome Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1961 underground
nuclear test conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission. This
was the first test in the Plowshare Program, a program to develop
peaceful uses for nuclear weapons. The Lawrence Radiation Lab
(which later became Lawrence Livermore National Lab) designed
this test, which was to have many physical experiments associated
with it, including the collection of isotopes, and to study
the possibility of using nuclear explosions to generate electricity.
The test, one of two large-scale underground nuclear
tests in New Mexico, was conducted 1,200 feet below the surface
in a salt deposit. The nuclear device was placed at the end
of an underground corridor over 1,000 feet long. When detonated,
the device, with an explosive yield equivalent to 3,100 tons
of TNT, created a cavity 164 feet long and 72 feet high. A stream
of radioactive smoke and steam flowed out of the shaft and ventilation
lines, and formed a radioactive cloud that traveled northwards
(and was detected, by some, as far away as Kansas).
Even though workers entered the chamber just a
few months after the blast, the cavity remains highly radioactive
to this day. The surface of the test site is now used to graze
cattle, and the same salt formation is now the location of the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, eight miles north of the site.
Back To Top
White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), at nearly 4000 square miles,
is one of the largest military facilities in the country. It
is primarily a test range whose main function is the support
of missile development and test programs for the Army, Navy,
Air Force, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
other government agencies and private industry.
Like most large military installations in the
West, White Sands was created during World War II. It was officially
established on July 9, 1945, one week before the world's first
nuclear explosion, the Trinity test, was performed at its northern
end. Over the years, most of the missile systems in the US arsenal
were tested at WSMR, including the V-2, Nike, Viking, Corporal,
Lance and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. WSMR is currently
the test range for the experimental Delta Clipper, McDonnell
Douglas's reusable, tail-landing space vehicle.
The range has developed launch facilities in other areas of
New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho for long-range testing. In such
tests, missiles from these locations fly over the countryside
and impact on White Sands. White Sands also provides an alternate
landing site for the space shuttle program. In 1982 the orbiter
Columbia landed on the range's Northrop Strip after its third
flight into space.
In addition to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and
NASA, many aerospace companies also have facilities permanent
at the range. The WSMR employs 8,800 people, and is under operational
control of the US. Army Test and Evaluation Command (TECOM),
located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Headquarters for
the WSMR is located 20 miles east of Las Cruces, off of US Highway
70. There is an impressive missile park (open 8 to 4 daily)
and a small museum (open 8 to 4:30, Monday through Friday) located
near the gate at the range Headquarters. Back
To Top
The site of the worlds first nuclear blast, the Trinity
Shot of the Manhattan Project, is on the north end of the 4,000
square mile White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It is open
to the public twice a year, on the first Saturday in April and
October. The site consists of a fenced area, enclosing much
of the ground-zero area, with a monument at its center. Though
the crater formed by the explosion has long-since been filled
in, there is a portion of the blast area at ground zero which
has been left intact for display purposes, visible through windows
in a the canopy that covers it (the canopy serves the duel function
of protecting it from erosion, and protecting visitors from
it, as the original ground is still quite radioactive). Small
pieces of Trinitite, the fused silica rock formed by the intense
heat of the blast, still litters the Trinity Site, and it is
radioactive enough to fog photographic film. Back
To Top
The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground
nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using
a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part
of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses
of nuclear weapons, and was the first use of a nuclear explosion
for industrial purposes.
The test was overseen by the San Francisco Operations
Office of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was conducted by
the Lawrence Radiation Lab (later to become the Lawrence Livermore
National Lab) in conjunction with the El Paso Natural Gas Company.
Called "gas stimulation", the technique has been used
employing conventional explosives, and it was hoped that a larger
nuclear explosion would be capable of opening up "tight"
gas deposits which are not otherwise economically viable. The
test called for a 29 kiloton nuclear device to be placed at
the bottom of a 4,240 foot deep shaft drilled in a "tight"
shale formation known to contain natural gas.
To a large degree the experiment went as planned:
the underground cavity produced by the explosion, 80 feet wide
and 335 feet high, filled with natural gas from the fractured
surrounding rock. However the gas was too radioactive to be
commercially distributed by the public utilities.
The site, in Carson National Forest, is open to
public access. It consists of a clearing with a small monument,
which has a plaque containing a brief description of the event.
Back To Top
Kirtland Air Force Base is one of the most
vital and active military facilities in the country, with over
20,000 people working within its secured perimeter, at the south
end of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Among the 180 tenant organizations
at Kirtland are:
-Sandia National Laboratories
-the headquarters of the Air Force's Phillips Laboratories
-the National Atomic Museum
-the Department of Energy's Albuquerque Operations Office
-and of course the facilities and operations of the Air Force
Base, which include the Manzano Mountains nuclear weapons storage
facility.
Back To Top
The Air Force's Phillips Laboratory is headquartered at Kirtland
Air Force Base. The Laboratory is one of the Air Force's major
research and development labs, and is a focal point for all
space- and missile-related research and technology; including
geophysics, propulsion, space vehicles, survivability, and directed-energy
weapons. The Laboratory has an annual budget of over $600 million,
and has nearly 1,900 military and civilian employees at three
locations: Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; Hanscom Air
Force Base, Massachusetts; and Edwards Air Force Base, California.
It is part of Air Force Materiel Command and reports to and
supports the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles
Air Force Base, California. Back
To Top
The Albuquerque Operations Office of the DOE is located on Kirtland
Air Force Base. This office is one of eight DOE operations offices
across the country. The Albuquerque office is responsible for
the management of several key DOE facilities:
-Sandia National Lab, also
based on Kirtland Air Force Base
-Los Alamos National Lab, in Los Alamos, New Mexico
-The Kansas City Plant, in Kansas City, Missouri
-The Mound Plant in Miamisburg, Ohio
-The Pinellas Plant in Largo, Florida
-The Pantex Plant, in Amarillo, Texas
Back To Top
Sandia National Laboratory is one of the three primary diversified
research and development organizations operated by the Department
of Energy (the other two are Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos).
Sandia employs about 8,000 people and has an annual operating
budget near $1.4 billion. It is headquartered at Kirtland Air
Force Base , with additional facilities in Livermore, California,
Hawaii, and at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.
Sandia was established in the
1940's to support the development of nuclear weapons. It was
managed by AT&T's Bell Labs up to 1992, when management
was transferred to the Martin Marietta Corporation, the defense
technologies company recently merged with Lockheed. Sandia now
conducts R&D in defense, environmental remediation, energy
production, non-proliferation verification technologies, robotics,
nano-technologies, and remote-sensing, just to name a few. Like
the other DOE labs, Sandia's future is uncertain, though its
substantial facilities are not likely to be abandoned, nor is
its substantial contribution to national defense and the local
economy likely to be ignored when changes to the role of the
DOE are considered. Back
To Top
The National Atomic Museum is a large
gallery of artifacts and informational displays about the nations
nuclear weapons development program. The museum is operated
by the Department of Energy (DOE), and is located on the grounds
of Kirtland Air Force Base.
On display at the Museum are numerous nuclear weapons casings,
including the casings of Fat Man and Little Boy, the types of
bombs used on Japan in World War II. Also on display is the
casing of a Mk. 17 hydrogen bomb, the same type that fell out
of a B-36 bomber on its decent into Kirtland Air Force Base
in 1957. Static displays on the history of the development of
nuclear technologies, and a regular screening of the film The
Ten Seconds that Shook the World are additional features of
the museum. In the lot outside is a nuclear cannon, and several
aircraft, including a B-29 and a B-52.
The library is one of the best
features of the museum, as it houses a good collection of books
on nuclear and military technologies, as well as housing many
of the government documents that served as source material for
these books. There is also a museum store with a limited array
of scientific models and toys, and an unusual collection of
out-of-print books for sale (many at high price). Parts from
missiles and Cray supercomputers can also be purchased, while
supplies last.
The museum was founded by the
Defense Nuclear Agency in 1969, and was congressionally chartered
as the nations "official" Atomic Museum in 1991. However,
with possible cut-backs and changes to the DOE, management of
the museum may soon be transferred to private industry, probably
into the hands of Lockheed-Martin, the primary contractor at
Sandia Labs, located nearby on Kirtland Air Force Base. If this
occurs, changes to the museum are likely to follow. Back
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