The environmental impacts of ongoing and planned activities at the Nevada Test Site will be addressed during a public hearing scheduled by the National Nuclear Security Administration at 5 p.m. Monday at the Bob Ruud Community Center.

The primary mission of the Nevada Test Site is to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. The test site is also a waste disposal facility for low-level and mixed low-level radioactive waste. At the same time re-mediation of groundwater, soil and structures from past nuclear testing is ongoing.

The envrionmental impact study concludes there are no significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns at the test site.

Some of the new projects at the test site in the past five years include:

* The Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research Facility;

* A staging, assembly and storage facility for explosives at the Baker Site;

* The relocation of a device assembly facility relocated from Los Alamos National Laboratory for nuclear material criticality research and experimentation;

* The Atlas Facility, relocated from Los Alamos National Laboratory, to conduct pulsed-power experiments;

* Infrastructure improvements at the Area 1 complex;

* Use of a tunnel at Area 12 for staging and assessing a damaged nuclear weapon or improvised nuclear device.

The study says the NNSA "would have the Nevada Test Site remain the high explosives research and development testing center for large quantities of high explosives ... and would cease flight test operations at the Tonopah Test Range."

The device assembly facility would be used for limited dismantling of nuclear weapons, the EIS states.

Construction of a National Center for Combating Terrorism was completed in 2006.

The NTS is limited to receipt of no more than 710,000 cubic feet of mixed low-level radioactive waste and must close the waste disposal unit by December 2010.

As of June 2007, the EIS reports 22 sub-critical nuclear experiments and 12 smaller special nuclear material recovery experiments have been conducted in the U1a complex. The NNSA is planning to install a large-bore powder gun in the U1a complex, to fire a large projectile into fixed, special nuclear material targets.

Due to population increases in the vicinity of the Nevada Test Site, radiological and chemical accident scenarios were reanalyzed.

For the future, the EIS points to plans for the consolidated plutonium center; consolidated hydro-testing and major, environmental testing facilities of nuclear weapons components for things like heat and cold.