June 2023

In March of 1953 a 24-kiloton tower detonation codenamed Nancy dropped radioactive fallout over thousands of sheep grazing on the winter range just northeast of the Nevada Test Site (NTS). By the time the herds returned home to Cedar City, Utah, several weeks later, there were problems afoot. Many had blisters and scabbing around the […]

“What would happen if radioactivity itched?” Ulrich Beck ponders. If it did, the public would not be dependent upon organizational actors, both corporate and governmental, to intercede on their behalf. In turn, socio-technical prowess introduces hazards the individual, family, or community cannot easily negotiate. As Beck notes, the pubic are left in a state of

The Nevada Test Site (NTS) was home to nearly 100 atmospheric atomic detonations between 1951-1962 as well as more than 800 underground detonations, which ceased in 1992. Deep within the NTS lies Yucca Flat. It is scarred by underground detonations eliciting not mushroom clouds but subsidence craters due to obliteration of rock far below the

Shot Simon in April of 1953 was the largest open-air tower detonation to date at the Nevada Test Site (NTS)–although less by design as its yield exceeded expectations by 20 percent. It was a brusque 43-kilotons or roughly three times the explosive yield of the device that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. As the mushroom cloud raced