Concerns over blast mushroom
Utah lawmaker is worried about fallout from explosion in Nevada

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, who represents members of the Navajo Nation living in Utah, wants assurance that a 700-ton blast planned for June 2 at Nevada Test Site will not disperse radioactive remnants from previous nuclear tests into the atmosphere.

Matheson sent a letter Friday to James Tegnelia, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), laying out a number of concerns.

"I would like to know exactly what precautions are being taken," he said. "Specifically, what kind of monitoring system is in place at the demonstration location and how can the downwind public be assured that there is no risk to them?"

The Navajo Nation received several calls last week from concerned citizens who had heard about the proposed Nevada Test Site blast.

Matheson said though he understands that the June 2 "Divine Strake" test is not a nuclear test, "I am greatly concerned that you have not provided the public with adequate assurances that the test is not being conducted in order to further misguided attempts to build new low-yield nuclear devices.

"You are well aware that at 700 tons (595-ton equivalent yield) this demonstration will not simulate an actual conventional bomb because no bomber in the U.S. fleet has the capacity to carry a weapon of this size," he said.

Tegnelia previously commented that the June 2 test will be "the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons."

Based on publicly available unclassified information, Matheson said the simulation is much smaller than any nuclear weapon the United States currently possesses.

"Therefore, in spite of your public assurances reported in the press this week that this test is not part of plans to develop a new nuclear weapon, I remain greatly concerned that DTRA is in fact working to assist in the development of a low-yield nuclear weapon," he told Tegnelia.

Congressmen were concerned in 2003 when Congress "mistakenly repealed" the Spratt-Furse ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, Matheson said, because they felt that advocates for repealing the ban were yielding to those who actively support the development of new nuclear weapons.

At the time, the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration assured Congress that the ban should be repealed because it hindered research efforts and that no actual weapon was being stealthily developed.

Bunker Buster?
Matheson said another cause for concern is that DTRA recently confirmed that Divine Strake is the Tunnel Target Defeat Advanced Concept and Technology Demonstration specified in the agency's FY2007 budget.

He said the budget document states that the demonstration"will develop a planning tool that will improve the warfighter's confidence in selecting the smaller proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage."

Matheson said, "That sounds like preparation for a low-yield nuclear weapon to me."

The budget document also specifies that funds will be used to conduct a large-scale tunnel defeat demonstration "using high explosives to produce the desired ground shock environment at the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site."

Matheson said, "This begs the question: What is the desired ground shock environment?"

He said the budget statements indicate that the demonstration is indeed linked to nuclear arsenal objectives. "Yet in today's Washington Post, a DTRA spokesperson was quoted as saying that 'although DTRA was not disavowing the budget documents, things change. That has changed and the wording got left in' improperly, she said, meaning the references to 'nuclear'," Matheson said.

"I find these inconsistencies to be very disturbing and I would like to know what changed and what is currently the specific intent of this project. In my experience, budget documents and the stated intent of planned experiments do not typically change on a whim."

Matheson also questioned factors such as wind conditions at the time the blast is supposed to take place.

"What is the maximum wind speed under which Divine Strake would be conducted? How far is the large dust cloud expected to travel under that condition?"

While Matheson said he has long supported efforts to enhance conventional weaponry rather than nuclear options, he is worried "that this demonstration is publicly being billed as a conventional demonstration when its actual intent is to further the pursuit of a new nuclear weapon."

Cold War Part II
Atomic tests at Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and 1960s sent up billowing clouds of deadly radioactive fallout that drifted for the next 20 years from the California coast to New England.

The clouds passed over the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni reservations, and many still recall seeing the mushroom cloud on the horizon. Though numerous Navajos have filed for downwinder benefits, few have been compensated.

Uranium from the Navajo Nation helped fuel the buildup of America's nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. With the 2005 Energy Policy Act and President Bush's push for nuclear energy development, another group of uranium mining companies are now jockeying for position and profit from Navajo uranium reserves despite the Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing.

But the U.S. push for nuclear energy development and the role Navajo Nation land and resources will play in U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici's and Sen. Jeff Bingaman's plans for increased domestic energy production is just one small piece of a global picture.

A secret draft on "Energy Security" scheduled to be released in July at the 2006 G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, calls for a new global expansion of nuclear power as well as trillions of dollars in new investment to escalate oil, gas and coal production around the world, according to the human rights group, Reclaim the Commons, which has posted the draft on its Website (http://reclaimthecommons.net).

"We are hopeful of a very substantial rebirth of the global nuclear industry," U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said last week after a meeting of the G8 energy ministers in Moscow. The G8 plans to officially release and launch its "Communique on Energy Security" on July 16, the anniversary of the first-ever atomic bomb blast, at the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

The push for a "nuclear rebirth" is being led among the G8 countries by the United States and Russia. Other members of the G8 include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany, which has pledged to shut down its 19 nuclear power plants and get out of atomic power altogether, attacked the G8 plan.