Divine Strake in Nevada: Other Contamination

The soil at the proposed Divine Strake blast site may be contaminated not only from the initial deposition of fallout from atomic blasts and safety experiments, but also from the effects of three mechanisms that are capable of distributing contamination from adjacent areas in the Nevada Test Site:

• Re-suspension
• Water colloids and aquifers
• Forest fires

Re-suspension contamination: Many radionuclides, such as plutonium, tend to accumulate in the top few centimeters of the soil.  In the desert environment of Southern Nevada, where strong winds are commonplace, these radionuclides could easily be re-suspended and carried over  distances of many miles.  Richard Miller confirms this possibility of re-suspension, saying that at the Nevada Test Site, 'soil can easily migrate five miles, even where the winds don’t exceed 50 mph.'

Even if an environmental impact study finds no soil contamination, since re-suspension is ongoing, there can be no degree of certainty that the soils at the proposed Divine Strake test site will not be immediately subject to contamination from re-suspension.

The effects of water:  Re-suspension is not the only mechanism that can carry radionuclides into nearby areas.   In 1998, a DOE team that found plutonium almost one mile from the site of a 1968 underground nuclear test came to the conclusion that the plutonium particles traveled on water molecules called colloids.  This finding was re-iterated in Jane Braxton Little's article titled 'The greening of the Nevada Test Site,' which reads: 

Scientists have found that plutonium from underground bomb tests has hitched a ride on microscopic specks of clay suspended in ground water and has traveled 1.3 kilometers in 30 years, much faster than they had expected.

The site location of the proposed Divine Strake test lies only 1.1 miles from surface radiation where six underground nuclear bombs were detonated.

Also, recently, Richard Miller found mention in historic DOE documents of the existence of springs in Area 16, where the Divine Strake test is planned.  Miller writes: 'The presence of springs may indicate the presence of an aquifer, and thus the possibility of contamination.'

Adding more fuel to the fire:  Scientists in Canada recently confirmed a theory that forest fires are capable of re-distributing radionuclides over great distances.  Over the past half-century, wild fires within the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site - and prescribed burns outside the boundaries -  have re-dispersed radioactive particles from atomic testing and dispersal experiments throughout the NTS, the State of Nevada and beyond Nevada's borders.  When the BLM proposed a fire management plan in 2001 targeted at forests north of NTS, the Western Shoshone were up in arms, saying the burns would stir up radioactive debris lying dormant in dead trees and affect downwind communities.   This fire danger is a reality for other DOE sites as well.

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