The Nevada National Security Site, known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas. Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, the site was established in 1951 for the testing of nuclear devices. It covers approximately 1,360 square miles (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain. Nuclear weapons testing at the site began with a 1-kiloton (4.2 TJ) bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat on January 27, 1951. Over the subsequent four decades, over 1,000 nuclear explosions were detonated at the site. Many of the iconic images of the nuclear era come from the site.
Project Plowshare was the overall United States program for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes. The program was organized in June 1957 as part of the worldwide Atoms for Peace efforts. As part of the program, 35 nuclear warheads were detonated in 27 separate tests. A similar program was carried out in the Soviet Union under the name Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy.
Operation Crosstie was a series of 48 nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1967–1968 at the Nevada Test Site. These tests followed the Operation Latchkey series and preceded the Operation Bowline series.
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance, yield, and effects of nuclear weapons. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by different conditions, and how personnel, structures, and equipment are affected when subjected to nuclear explosions. However, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength. Many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status through a nuclear test.
Project Chariot was a 1958 United States Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices.
Project PACER, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the mid-1970s, explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs —or, as stated in a later proposal, fission bombs—inside an underground cavity. Its proponents claimed that the system is the only fusion power system that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. It would also require a continuous supply of nuclear explosives and contemporary economics studies demonstrated that these could not be produced at a competitive price compared to conventional energy sources.
Operation Hardtack I was a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States from April 28 to August 18 in 1958 at the Pacific Proving Grounds. At the time of testing, the Operation Hardtack I test series included more nuclear detonations than the total of prior nuclear explosions in the Pacific Ocean. These tests followed the Project 58/58A series, which occurred from 1957 December 6 to 1958, March 14, and preceded the Operation Argus series, which took place in 1958 from August 27 to September 6.
Project Rulison, named after the rural community of Rulison, Colorado, was an underground 40-kiloton nuclear test project in the United States on September 10, 1969, about 8 miles (13 km) SE of the town of Grand Valley, Colorado in Garfield County. The location of "Surface Ground Zero" is 39°24′19.0″N107°56′54.7″W. The depth of the test cavity was approximately 8,400 ft (2,600 m) below the ground surface. It was part of the Operation Mandrel weapons test series under the name Mandrel Rulison, as well as the Operation Plowshare project which explored peaceful engineering uses of nuclear explosions. The peaceful aim of Project Rulison was to determine if natural gas could be easily liberated from underground regions. This site remains under active monitoring by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management.
Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) are nuclear explosions conducted for non-military purposes. Proposed uses include excavation for the building of canals and harbours, electrical generation, the use of nuclear explosions to drive spacecraft, and as a form of wide-area fracking. PNEs were an area of some research from the late 1950s into the 1980s, primarily in the United States and Soviet Union.
Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy was a Soviet program to investigate peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). It was analogous to the United States program Operation Plowshare.
Underground nuclear testing is the test detonation of nuclear weapons that is performed underground. When the device being tested is buried at sufficient depth, the nuclear explosion may be contained, with no release of radioactive materials to the atmosphere.
Project Gnome was the first nuclear test of Project Plowshare and was the first continental nuclear weapon test since Trinity to be conducted outside of the Nevada Test Site, and the second test in the state of New Mexico after Trinity. It was tested in southeastern New Mexico on December 10, 1961, approximately 40 km southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Operation Redwing was a United States series of 17 nuclear test detonations from May to July 1956. They were conducted at Bikini and Enewetak atolls by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF7). The entire operation followed Project 56 and preceded Project 57. The primary intention was to test new, second-generation thermonuclear weapons. Also tested were fission devices intended to be used as primaries for thermonuclear weapons, and small tactical weapons for air defense. Redwing demonstrated the first United States airdrop of a deliverable hydrogen bomb during test Cherokee. Because the yields for many tests at Operation Castle in 1954 were dramatically higher than predictions, Redwing was conducted using an "energy budget": There were limits to the total amount of energy released, and the amount of fission yield was also strictly controlled. Fission, primarily "fast" fission of the natural uranium tamper surrounding the fusion capsule, greatly increases the yield of thermonuclear devices, and constitutes the great majority of the fallout, as nuclear fusion is a relatively clean reaction.
Project Oilsand, also known as Project Oilsands, and originally known as Project Cauldron, was a 1958 proposal to exploit the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta via the underground detonation of up to 100 nuclear explosives; hypothetically, the heat and pressure created by an underground detonation would boil the bitumen deposits, reducing their viscosity to the point that standard oilfield techniques could be used.
Project Rio Blanco was an underground nuclear test that took place on May 17, 1973 in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, approximately 36 miles (58 km) northwest of Rifle.
Project Shoal was an underground nuclear test that took place on October 26, 1963 within the Sand Springs Range, approximately 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Fallon, Nevada, in a granite formation of the range. The site was selected because its earthquake activity afforded a basis for seismic signal comparisons.
Project Carryall was a 1963 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to use nuclear explosives to excavate a path for Interstate 40 (I-40) and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) through the Bristol Mountains of southern California. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects.
Project Ketch was a 1964 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to use nuclear explosives to excavate a natural gas storage reservoir in Pennsylvania. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects. The project was the only Plowshare project proposed for the northeastern United States.
Project Thunderbird was a 1967 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to use nuclear explosives to prepare coalbeds to gasify coal in place underground in Wyoming. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects. The project aimed to exploit deep coal deposits to gasify them in situ with controlled combustion in the rubble chimney resulting from a deep nuclear detonation. The project was to be located on the border of Johnson County and Campbell County|, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Gillette, Wyoming, in the Powder River Basin.
The Project Gasbuggy placard.
Cross-section of the Gasbuggy site.
Gasbuggy nuclear device before emplacement.
Artists impression of the test setup
Predicted underground effects
