The Nevada Test Site is infamous for the nuclear tests that occurred there during the 1950's and early 1960's. The site is approximately 1,300 square miles, roughly the size of Rhode Island. It's been written that the site today is still littered with the remnants of makeshift towns that were built in order to test the effects of the initial impact of the explosion, twisted and/or molten metal and broken concrete foundations amongst desert landscapes and a dry lake bed.
Back in the 1950's, the small sleepy town of St. George had front row seats to the 14 or so nuclear tests, seeing the western sky light up, seeing the mushroom cloud. Naturalist and author, Terry Tempest Williams, (who lost her mother, grandmothers, and aunts to cancer attributed to the fallout of these tests), described seeing one of the tests in her masterful essay "The Clan of the One Breasted Women."
As background to her comments, Williams was having dinner with her father. It had been one year since her mother, Diane Williams, had died as a result of cancer. As they were talking of their times together as a family, Williams confided with him about a dream she continues to have since a young child, a dream in which the whole family is present.
I told my father that for years, as long as I could remember, I saw this flash of light in the night in the desert--that this image had so permeated my being that I could not venture south without seeing it again, on the horizon, illuminating buttes and mesas.
"You did see it," he said.
"Saw what?"
"The bomb. The cloud. We were driving home from Riverside, California. You were sitting on [your mother's] lap. She was pregnant. In fact, I remember the day, September 7, 1957. We had just gotten out of the Service. We were driving north, past Las Vegas. It was an hour or so before dawn, when this explosion went off. We not only heard it, but felt it. I thought the oil tanker in front of us had blown up. We pulled over and suddenly, rising from the desert floor, we saw it, clearly, this golden-stemmed cloud, the mushroom. The sky seeemed to vibrate with an eerie pink glow. Within a few minutes, a light ash was raining down on the car."
I stared at my father.
"I thought you knew that," he said. "It was common occurrence in the fifties."
Today, St. George and the nieghboring towns that surround it are growing at an amazing rate. In the last three decades, according to the demographics posted at the St. George Chamber of Commerce, the entire county as seen a growth of 86%, the fastest in the state. Population today is approximately 106,000.
St. George is known for its great recreation. It's home of 10 championship golf courses, the Utah Summer Olympics, the Utah Senior Games, and a marathon that is not only the 15th largest in the nation but recognized by Runner's World as one of the 10 Most Scenic and Fastest marathons and Top 20 marathons in the US.
St. George also sits nearby Zion National Park and Bryces National Park, some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes and structures of the world.
Known as the Gateway to the West, St. George may soon again become the causeway of fallout from nuclear testing that have resumed at the Nevada Test Site. On September 19, 2003, the subcritical experiment named Piano was conducted. On May 25, 2004, the subcritical experiment named Armando was conducted. Subcritical tests are underground nuclear explosions that consist of "detonating high explosives around plutonium in a steel spere while X-rays, radar and lasers chart the behavior of the radioactive element..." (Associated Press report from Las Vegas, "Nuclear Experiment Planned in Nevada," May 24, 2004.)
And today, as reported by The New York Times, the Republicans of the Senate brought the reality of further testing to a head by defeating a Democratic proposal (55 to 42) to "eliminate $27.6 million for a study of a nuclear weapon capable of penetrating underground bunkers and $9 million to explore other nuclear concepts, including smaller bombs known as mini-nukes...."
Democrats feel this as another grave loss, thinking that 1) "research [will] spur other nations to turn to such weapons;" and 2) "even bombs exploding underground [will] pose risks of fallout far beyond their targets."
That the administration has budgeted $485 million over five years for the so-called bunker buster is evidence that the Pentagon already intends to move beyond research, said the opponents, led by Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dianne Feinstein of California.
Backers of the administration denied that a decision to produce the weapons had already been made, saying money was included in projections of future budgets only in case Congress gave approval.
But from an article in the Deseret Morning News on May 25, 2004, Frank von Hippel was informed by a DoD official that the administration does have plans for resuming testing.
Frank von Hippel, who teaches public and international affairs and works on nuclear weapons issues at Princeton, was a White House adviser on national security, concerned with science and technology policy, and was one of those responsible for arranging the present moratorium on nuclear testing.
He told the Deseret Morning News on Monday that a Defense Department official told him earlier this year that "based on the way he saw things going inside the administration, that if the Bush administration is re-elected that we would resume testing in 2007 or 2008."
Utah Congressman Jim Matheson, along with his brother Scott Matheson (who is running for Governor of Utah this year) are key figures in this battle to stop nuclear tests from resuming. Why? For two main reasons: 1) Because they too are victims of the tests that time has already forgot. Many of their family members have been diagnosed with cancers caused by the exposure to radioactive fallout; many of them have died because of their illness, including their father, Scott Matheson, who served as Utah Governor for two terms in the 1970's. He died at the age of 61.
2) Their father fought for the release of government research in the 1980s that revealed health and safety concerns regarding atomic testing. In 1990, the fruits of this battle were realized when the government acknowledged its responsibility to the victims by passing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
"Like thousands of Utah families," Congressman Jim Matheson explains, "I am painfully aware of the federal government's failure to protect its citizens from the dangers of radioactive fallout created during atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s and 60s."
I remember my father telling me about how people in southern Utah would watch the sky light up from the nuclear tests and how Utahns supported the program because they were strong patriots who believed in their country and trusted their government. Many untimely deaths later, we've learned to be skeptical of the government's safety claims regarding this issue.
The federal government said we were safe. The federal government knew we were at risk. I will not stand by and let the government take Utah families down that path again.
But Republicans are urgent that the time is ripe for us to act now, that because of the nature of threats to the United States it would be irresponsible to not proceed researching new nuclear weapons, such as mini-nukes.
In the NY TImes, Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) said "Irrational rogue nations and nonstate actors have emerged as a greater threat to us."
Terry Tempest Williams remembers the sense of urgency in those days, too:
The United States of the 1950's was red, white, and blue. The Korean War was raging. McCarthyism was rampant. Ike was it, and the cold war was hot. If you were against nuclear testing, you were for a communist regime.
Much has been written about this "American nuclear tragedy." Public health was secondary to national security. The Atomic Energy Commissioner, Thomas Murray, said, "Gentlemen, we must not let anything interfere with this series of tests, nothing."
Again and again, the American public was told by its government, in spite of burns, blisters, and nausea, "It has been found that the tests may be conducted with adequate assurance of safety under conditions prevailing at the bombing reservations."
Assuaging public fears was simply a matter of public relations. "Your best action," an Atomic Energy Commission booklet read, "is not to be worried about fallout." A news release typical of the times stated, "We find no basis for concluding that harm to any individual has resulted from radioactive fallout."
It's been 50 years since the first explosions lit up the western skies of St. George. It's been just over 36 years that the side-effects started manifesting themselves in fathers, husbands, wives, mothers, and in their children, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles.
This time around, the skyline won't light up like an exploding sun. The air won't vibrate nor turn a pale shade of pink. But who can promise these Americans that the invisible effects of these new nuclear tests won't seep into the air through natural vents in the ground or break out and spoil the natural water reserves? Who can promise that these invisible effects won't slowly start to steal the life away from the inhabitants downwind? Whose promises could or would we believe?
Questions such as this make the outcome of this year's elections that much more important. We shouldn't have to walk down this road again!
Sources:
"Matheson Puts Utah First , Crafts Bill To Protect Utahns from Nuclear Weapons Testing"
The New York Times article: ttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16nukes.html
Williams, Terry Tempest. "The Clan of the One Breasted Women;" pages 281 - 290 of her novel Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; Pantheon Books, New York, 1991.
"Nuclear Experiment Planned in Nevada," Associated Press report from Las Vegas, May 24, 2004.)
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