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Divine Strake
A Non-Nuclear NTS Explosion
The Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, The
Department of Defense and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has proposed
a non-nuclear detonation at the Nevada Test Site. The explosive will consist
of 700 ton mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. The draft of the Revised
Environmental Assessment prepared by the Department of Energy (and other agencies)
can be found here.
The Site
The test is scheduled to take place at Area 16a. An aerial view of
the site can be seen here, with a geological overlay
here. Amore complex geological map is here, and
a wider shot of the target area showing earlier nuclear events is here.
Earlier Tests
Area 16 has likely sustained fallout contamination from earlier nuclear
tests conducted nearby, including shot Turk (area
2), Kepler (area 4), Shasta (area
2a), Smoky (area 2) Galileo (area
1) and Coulomb
B (area 3g). Some of these tests produced such radioisotopes as americium-241, cobalt-60, cesium-137,
and europium-155.
Rainouts
One of the problems associated with fallout involves rainouts,
the possibility that a thunderstorm can send significant amounts of the airborne
fallout debris to earth. This is discussed here.
References: DASA-1251 "Local Fallout from Nuclear Test Detonations",
Volume 2: "Compilations of Fallout Patterns and Related Test Data"
Parts 1-3. Manfred Morgenthau, Harvy Meieran, Richard Showers, Jeffrey
Morse, Norman Dombeck and Arnoldo Garcia of the U.S. Army Nuclear Defense
Laboratory under Defense Atomic Support Agency sponsorship. Radioisotope
data were derived from "Results of Calculations of External Gamma-Radiation
Exposure Rates from Fallout and the Related Radionuclide Compositions
Parts 1-8. Harry G. Hicks. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
CA. July, 1981. Discussion of rainouts is found in "The Effects of
Nuclear Weapons" 3rd Ed. Edited and compiled by Samuel Glasstone and
Philip J. Dolan for The United States Department of Defense and The
United States Department of Energy. 1977.
Documents are available through the National
Technical Information Service.
A complete list of our technical books on
nuclear fallout is found here.
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