Bringing the Bombs Home
In 1951 few people openly objected to the U.S. Government’s announcement that it would begin exploding atomic
bombs over Nevada along with continuing atmospheric tests in the Pacific. The reasons were couched in nationalsecurity
terminology. The Korean War was well under way. Nuclear tests in Nevada would mean a far shorter
supply line from weapons laboratories and materiel depots.1 And continental testing meant diversified atomic war
game scenarios for U.S. troops. These logistical and economic advantages all supported the government’s decision
to expand the nuclear test program by bringing it closer to home.
A test site on the mainland, stated the AEC’s director of military application, would serve as "a location where its
basic security and general accessibility cannot be jeopardized by enemy action."2 Rejecting alternative spots in New
Mexico Utah, and North Carolina, the AEC’s commissioners agreed upon the desert area northwest of Las Vegas.3
The location in southern Nevada seemed almost ideal for the purpose at hand. The Nevada Test Site would be
buffered from access by being placed within the Tonopah Bombing and Gunnery Range, which had already claimed
over five thousand square miles. On the southern edge of the site the Air Force had already erected temporary
buildings at Camp Mercury that could be handy in administering the nuclear tests.
Government nuclear planners held a series of meetings to pinpoint "radiological hazards" involved with
exploding atom bombs in Nevada. A secret conference of more than a score of officials—including Enrico Fermi
and Edward Teller—at Los Alamos on August 1, 1950, discussed anticipated off-site safety aspects. Concern was
raised for keeping the most densely populated areas out of the heaviest fallout zones. Official minutes of the meeting
acknowledged "the probability that people will receive perhaps a little more radiation than medical authorities say is
absolutely safe."4
America plunged ahead with an intensive atomic bomb test program. During the 1950s and early 1960s more
than two hundred nuclear weapons sent huge mushroom clouds of radioactivity into the atmosphere from the Pacific
and Nevada. Total explosive force of those bombs, according to official figures, surpassed ninety thousand
kilotons—ninety megatons—equivalent to more than seven thousand atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on
Hiroshima.5
Some people were in the way, living in the wrong places at the wrong time.
1. For description of Los Alamos Laboratory discussion that led up to establishment of a continental test site, see McPhee, Curve of Binding Energy, pp. 59 60.
2. "Location of Proving Ground for Atomic Weapons," AEC Memo 141/7, December 13, 1950, p. 2.
3. Meeting on December 12, 1950, the AEC approved recommendations for proceeding with plans to use the Nevada site, although some staff memoranda
conceded that assumptions of safety for downwind residents were speculative. "These questions may be answered satisfactorily as test knowledge increases .
. . but they’re not satisfactorily answered at present," said one memo. (Uhl and Ensign, GI Guinea Pigs, p. 55.) For details of test-site selection, see Howard
L. Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), pp. 26-31.
4. "Meeting: Discussion of Radiological Hazards Associated with a Continental Test Site for Atomic Bombs," AEC, Los Alamos, New Mexico, August 1,
1950, pp. 13, 23, 24. Conferees concluded that "a tower-burst bomb having a yield of 25 kilotons could be detonated without exceeding the allowed
emergency tolerance dose of 6-12 r [roentgens] outside a 180-degree test area sector 100 miles in radius."
5. Announced US Nuclear Tests; "Joint Force Seven, Report WT-933: Cloud Photography," U.S. Government, January 27, 1958—cited in York, The Advisors,
p. 86.