MARK WAITE / PVT Thomas Enyeart, a nuclear engineer for the National Nuclear Safety Administration, at right, tries to dispel fears over radioactive fallout from the Divine Strake blast to a skeptical audience member at left in front of one of the displays at the Cashman Center Tuesday night. Advertisement

LAS VEGAS -- Comedians joked about recently executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein hiding out in his bunker during the first Gulf War back in 1990.

The U.S. military however is seriously concerned about foreign countries burying weapons of mass destruction in underground bunkers. While a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson wouldn't confirm what countries are suspected of hiding armaments underground, the NNSA touted the Divine Strake experiment as an essential test of how the military would attack such facilities.

Citizen Alert however trotted out attorney Bob Hager before the open house at the Cashman Center Tuesday night, who vowed to file suit to stop the test again this year.

The test was scheduled twice before only to be cancelled. The NNSA had talked about moving the test to New Mexico or Indiana.

The NNSA prefers the Nevada Test Site over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and China Lake in Southern California because of a desire to detonate the blast in a limestone bed with specific geological properties similar to actual military targets, the environmental assessment states.

Hager said the Divine Strake blast, which involves detonating 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil, ANFO, above a tunnel 100 feet in the ground, could disburse radioactive material remaining at the test site from the years of nuclear weapons blasts.

The NNSA issued a revised environmental assessment Dec. 22. The comment period ends Feb. 7.

Hager said Pahrump Valley residents can be considered downwinders, people who live downwind from the nuclear blasts. A handful of Western Shoshone Indians have signed on as litigants against the test in Duckwater, in northeastern Nye County.

"Everything over to Winnemucca and Death Valley would all be contaminated with Iodine 131 from the test site. So you're downwinders," he said. "What they're going to disburse is contaminated with 60 different radioactive materials based on their own data."

Hager said the NNSA can't predict where the fallout will occur.

He presented a 2004 report showing fallout from the Nevada Test Site was recorded over wide areas of Colorado and New Mexico as well as Utah and Nevada. Hager complained the NNSA only projects 50 miles out from the blast site, Divine Strake is expected to send debris 10,000 feet high.

A hot spot was projected in Gem County, Idaho, because 99 percent of the radioactivity comes down in rain, Hager said.

Six above-ground nuclear experiments in the Nevada Test Site from 1955 to 1957 caused radioactive fallout in the vicinity of the proposed blast site, he said. Hager said there's a huge crater in Area One, four miles from Area 16 and venting from a previous underground test a mile away.

Area 16, where the blast will occur, is roughly 30 miles due north of U.S. Highway 95 at Lathrop Wells, about in the middle of the Nevada Test Site.

The environmental assessment states Area 16 was established in 1961 to support complicated nuclear effects experiments that required a tunnel location in an isolated area away from other active nuclear weapons test areas. No atmospheric nuclear tests have been conducted in Area 16, the NNSA states.

The environmental assessment states, "The specific site of the proposed Divine Strake detonation, above the U16b tunnel, was not used for nuclear testing or other activities that would have introduced radioactivity into the soils potentially affected by the experiment."

The area was excavated following a January 2006 hearing of no significant impact to prepare for placing the explosives, the NNSA states. "Thus the ANFO emplacement would be in virgin rock that has not been exposed to previous testing activities at the NTS or to global fallout."

The NNSA adds, "aerial radiation surveys performed in 1992, 1994 and 2006, as well as ground-level radiation surveys performed in 2006 showed no detectable radiation above natural background levels in the vicinity of the proposed Divine Strake experiment site."

The blast will leave a crater with a 98-foot radius. The NNSA states man-made radioactivity is in the vicinity of the U16a muck pile, approximately one-mile from the U16b experiment site, a distance they said made it extremely unlikely radioactivity would be lofted into the atmosphere.

The NNSA plans to install 10 high-volume air samplers to test any fallout from the blast.

At one display, NNSA Nuclear Engineer Thomas Enyeart fielded questions from a few skeptical attendees. Enyeart said atmospheric fallout occurs around the world from weapons activities in Russia, China, even Chernobyl in 1986.

Weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s left no radioactive iodine in Utah, which has only a six-day half-life, Enyeart said.

The test site was designed for such tests, Enyeart noted- it's huge, the size of Rhode Island, and is surrounded by other federal facilities like the Nellis Air Force Range. Back in the heavy testing in the 1950s and 1960s, the NNSA didn't have public meetings on tests, conduct environmental assessments and lay out all the studies for the public like it does today, he said.

Enyeart said at the nearest test site boundaries the radioactive exposure would be only .005 millirems.

"It's a very small amount of radiation, It's about the radiation an average American gets from watching television a couple of days," Enyeart said.

NNSA spokeswoman Cheri Abdelnour said the test isn't tied to any particular weapon.

If the NNSA issues another finding of no significant impact and an announcement to conduct the test, Hager plans to file another lawsuit under a nuisance complaint and civil rights grounds. Previous tests were scheduled June 2 and June 23 last year then cancelled.

"We're going to be asking for the government never to be conducting this test," Hager said.

The attorney disagreed with the open forum format at the Cashman Center. While other attendees at the open house had sharp comments to NNSA representatives, a stenographer sat idly waiting to take public comment. A press contingent seemed to outnumber members of the public.

Under the open house format the public can't hear other points of view on residents who approve or disapprove of the project like at a public hearing, Hager said. He said, "if you learn anything you learn the government's position only."

"We believe it's a precursor to building nuclear bombs," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert. "It's clearly against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and clearly against the Non-Proliferation Treaty and how arrogant when we are telling other countries they can't even have a nuclear power plant and we're talking about new nuclear weapons."