The Nevada Test Site
The Nevada Test Site

Author: Emmet Gowin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0691196036

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"Emmet Gowin likes to ask a provocative question: "Which country on earth has had the largest number of nuclear bombs detonated within its borders?" The answer is the United States. Covering approximately 680 square miles, the Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, was the primary testing location of American nuclear devices from 1951 to 1992; 1,021 announced nuclear tests occurred there, 921 of which were underground. The site, which is closed to the public, including its airspace, contains 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, 400 miles of paved roads, 300 miles of unpaved roads, 10 heliports, and two airstrips. Its surface is covered with subsidence craters from testing, and in places looks like the moon. In 1996, Gowin received permission to document the landscape by air, after over a decade of working to secure access. These aerial views of environmental devastation--made quietly majestic but no less potent in the hands of a master photographer--unveil environmental travesties on a grand scale. While groups of images from the Nevada Test Site series have been published previously, this book will produce the largest number yet, and three quarters of the pictures will not have been published at all. Gowin is the only photographer to have been granted access to this site, which is now permanently closed, post-9/11. Other than images made by the government for geographic purposes, no other images of this landscape exist. The book will feature a preface by photographer Robert Adams (America, b. 1937), whose photographic and written work is concerned with landscape, urbanization, and activism. It will also feature an afterword by Gowin on how he made the images, and their significance to him today."--Provided by publisher.

United States Nuclear Tests
United States Nuclear Tests

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13:

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This document lists chronologically and alphabetically by name all nuclear tests and simultaneous detonations conducted by the United States from July 1945 through September 1992. Two nuclear weapons that the United States exploded over Japan ending World War II are not listed. These detonations were not "tests" in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed (as was the first test near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945), or to advance nuclear weapon design, or to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety as were the more than one thousand tests that have taken place since June 30,1946. The nuclear weapon (nicknamed "Little Boy") dropped August 6,1945 from a United States Army Air Force B-29 bomber (the Enola Gay) and detonated over Hiroshima, Japan had an energy yield equivalent to that of 15,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear weapon (virtually identical to "Fat Man") exploded in a similar fashion August 9, 1945 over Nagaski, Japan had a yield of 21,000 tons of TNT. Both detonations were intended to end World War II as quickly as possible. Data on United States tests were obtained from, and verified by, the U.S. Department of Energy's three weapons laboratories -- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Additionally, data were obtained from public announcements issued by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its successors, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy, respectively.

Nevada Test Site
Nevada Test Site

Author: Peter W. Merlin

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1467117447

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"Since Pres. Harry Truman established the Nevada Test Site (NTS) in December 1950, it has played a vital role in the security of the United States. For four decades, the test site's primary purpose was developmental testing of nuclear explosives. Atmospheric tests conducted over Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat between 1951 and 1962 involved thousands of Army troops and Marines simulating nuclear battlefield conditions. Civil defense planners studied blast and radiation effects and evaluated bomb shelter designs. Testing moved underground in 1963 to eliminate radioactive fallout. Other projects at the NTS included nuclear rocket engine development for space travel, training for NASA's Apollo astronauts, excavation experiments, radioactive waste storage studies, and aircraft testing. Since the last underground nuclear test in 1992, this geographically diverse testing and training complex north of Las Vegas--known since 2010 as the Nevada National Security Site--has been used to support nuclear stockpile stewardship and as a unique outdoor laboratory for government and industry research and development efforts."--Page 4 of cover.

Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons
Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-10-06

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0309096731

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Underground facilities are used extensively by many nations to conceal and protect strategic military functions and weapons' stockpiles. Because of their depth and hardened status, however, many of these strategic hard and deeply buried targets could only be put at risk by conventional or nuclear earth penetrating weapons (EPW). Recently, an engineering feasibility study, the robust nuclear earth penetrator program, was started by DOE and DOD to determine if a more effective EPW could be designed using major components of existing nuclear weapons. This activity has created some controversy about, among other things, the level of collateral damage that would ensue if such a weapon were used. To help clarify this issue, the Congress, in P.L. 107-314, directed the Secretary of Defense to request from the NRC a study of the anticipated health and environmental effects of nuclear earth-penetrators and other weapons and the effect of both conventional and nuclear weapons against the storage of biological and chemical weapons. This report provides the results of those analyses. Based on detailed numerical calculations, the report presents a series of findings comparing the effectiveness and expected collateral damage of nuclear EPW and surface nuclear weapons under a variety of conditions.

Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program
Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0309096103

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The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

Area 51
Area 51

Author: Annie Jacobsen

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2011-05-17

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 0316193852

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This "compellingly hard-hitting" bestseller from a Pulitzer Prize finalist gives readers the complete untold story of the top-secret military base for the first time (New York Times). It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government — but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror. This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

American Ground Zero
American Ground Zero

Author: Carole Gallagher

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 0262071460

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One photojournalist's decade-long commitment, a gripping collection of portraits and interviews of those whose lives were crossed by radioactive fallout.

Research Required to Support Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Monitoring
Research Required to Support Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Monitoring

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1997-08-01

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 0309174503

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On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations Headquarters. Over the next five months, 141 nations, including the four other nuclear weapon statesâ€"Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdomâ€"added their signatures to this total ban on nuclear explosions. To help achieve verification of compliance with its provisions, the treaty specifies an extensive International Monitoring System of seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasonic, and radionuclide sensors. This volume identifies specific research activities that will be needed if the United States is to effectively monitor compliance with the treaty provisions.

100 Suns
100 Suns

Author: Michael Light

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0307509834

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Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible—but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with one hundred photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers were sworn to secrecy. The title, 100 Suns, refers to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One . . . I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 Suns likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were conducted either in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location. The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions are pictures of the awestruck witnesses. The evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication while at same time profoundly disconcerting as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions, a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive bibliography. A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full Moon, 100 Suns forms an unprecedented historical document.