Las Vegas – An air-quality engineer says government plans for a huge non-nuclear blast at the Nevada Test Site failed to consider the possibility that the explosion will kick up fine radioactive dust and carry it hundreds of miles.
The proposed test would detonate 700 tons of a mixture of fuel oil and ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, the same materials in the bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168 people.
It would generate the first mushroom cloud in decades at the Nevada Test Site. Critics said it would kick up radioactive dust left from Cold War-era nuclear tests and allow it to drift toward Las Vegas and Utah.
Algirdas Leskys, a data analyst with the Clark County Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management, said Tuesday at a public forum that the draft environmental assessment didn’t consider the likelihood that extremely small bits of dust – measuring 2.5 microns – would become airborne. A micron is one one-millionth of a meter.
Leskys, who stressed that he was not acting in his official capacity, said dust that fine could settle as far away as Las Vegas or Utah.
Michael Skougard, an official of the National Nuclear Security Administration, acknowledged that analysts looked at larger, 10-micron particles when they determined that a 10,000-foot cloud would dissipate within 13 miles.
Skougard said Leskys’ concerns will be included in a final report before officials decide whether to authorize the test.
Officials say the blast would provide crucial data on the kind of shock needed to destroy deeply buried or hardened targets.
However, the test has been postponed indefinitely by a lawsuit filed by Western Shoshone tribe members and by people living downwind in Utah and Nevada.
