CLUI Team Visits Outer Limits of Nuclear Proving Ground

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CLUI Team Visits Outer Limits of Nuclear Proving Ground  

In limbo- an emplacement tower on Pahute Mesa, built for an underground nuclear test called Greenwater, which was canceled by the 1992 ban on nuclear testing. CLUI photo

A group of CLUI researchers and photographers explored the northern and western edges of the Nevada Test Site in November, being among the first "outsiders" to see some of the remote features of the Nation's primary nuclear proving ground.

Guided by a Department of Energy Public Affairs Officer (who wasn't afraid of driving off-road in the government jeep) the group traveled from Yucca Flat, into Mid Valley, then to the Area 16 tunnel portal, where they met with Laurence Ashbaugh, the head of the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) for Nevada. Mr. Ashbaugh explained the process and objectives of the tests that the DNA was conducting in the area, related to penetrator bombs (bombs designed to pierce hardened underground bunkers). Much of the northern and western parts of the Test Site remain in use for weapons research and secretive special operations training.

DNA meets CLUI; Defense Nuclear Agency Director Laurence Ashbaugh discusses the CLUI's Guide to the Nevada Test Site, with CLUI Director Matthew Coolidge. CLUI photo

Though most of the western side of the 1,350 square-mile Test Site hasn't been used for underground testing and looks like the rest of the desert that surrounds it, the topography of the northwestern region is heavily altered, as it was used for over 70 of the largest nuclear blasts at the site. Besides a major drilling operation, there is not much current activity at this high-altitude part of the Site, and the Area 20 Base Camp, which supported operations there, has been removed. A 140-foot tall emplacement tower for a canceled underground nuclear test, called Greenwater, remains abandoned on the large mesa-top.

After much searching on the rocky terrain, the team finally found one of the unmarked landmarks of the Test Site: the crater for the largest nuclear test conducted at the site, a 1.3 megaton underground blast called Boxcar, conducted in 1968. The subsidence crater, formed by the ground collapsing into the deep underground cavity produced by the blast, is 1000 feet across.

1000 foot wide Boxcar Crater: formed by the ground implosion that follows most underground nuclear tests. CLUI photo

The team, consisting of CLUI associates Stephen Skartvedt, an expert on the Plowshare Program, and Walter Cotten, professor of photography at San Diego State University, and Matthew Coolidge, a CLUI writer and researcher, spent a full day at the Site. The research was conducted for an upcoming lecture series, and for a future second edition of The Center's guidebook to the site.