NevadaCulture's video: Atomic Testing

In 1950, when the U.S. was engaged in the cold war, President Harry Truman established the Nevada Proving Grounds. The site is located 65 miles north of Las Vegas. This area later became the Nevada Test Site. The Nevada Test Site covers 1,350 square miles, and is larger than the state of Rhode Island. Testing for nuclear weapons began at the Nevada Test Site in 1951. Between the years 1951 and 1962, 100 above ground nuclear tests were conducted. The nuclear devices were dropped from planes, detonated at or near ground level, shot from a 280-mm cannon, placed on towers, and suspended from balloons. The nuclear tests were capable of immense destructive power. They were also controversial because some of the tests released dangerous levels of radioactivity into the atmosphere, and endangered the health of military personnel as well as people downwind of the atomic blasts. Beginning in 1962, all nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site were underground, and the last nuclear test was conducted there in September 1992. The Sedan Crater was formed when a 100 kiloton nuclear device, buried 635 feet below the surface of the Nevada landscape, was fired in July, 1962. The explosion displaced 12 million tons of earth. The crater it left in the desert is 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet in diameter. In 1951, during the Cold War, the Army carried out the Desert Rock Exercises. This was an experiment attempting to "dispel much of the fear and uncertainty surrounding atomic radiation and the effects of gamma and x-rays." A tent encampment was set up about 27 miles from where the atomic explosions were detonated at the Nevada Proving Grounds (now the Nevada Test Site.) There were about 5,000 soldiers, civilian observers and technicians at the encampment. For the Desert Rock I Exercise, the atomic weapon was fired as a airburst. The majority of the troops were out in the open about seven miles away. The soldiers were told to crouch down and face away from the blast. These video clips are part of the CD "Nevada Riches: The Land and People of the Silver State". The CD was made possible through a special appropriation from the 1999 Nevada State Legislature and grants of Library Services Technology Act Funds of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Nevada State Library and Archives. For more information please contact Jeff Kintop at 775-684-3410.