Excellent news!! The 700 ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil test being planned illegally by the United States on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada has been cancelled, not postponed and not delayed, but cancelled! – effective today, February 22, 2007. AP story and Federal Press Release follows. In response, Western Shoshone Defense Project Community Organizer Larson Bill stated: “Hopefully this will be a true beginning to an end of this type of testing and nuclear buildups – for the Western Shoshone and all humanity. We want to thank everyone who helped us in this struggle to defeat Divine Strake. The fight still continues for us on other environmental threats to our land and life – we look forward to everyone’s continued support.” Original WSDP press release attached. Feds cancel Divine Strake explosion ASSOCIATED PRESS (online@rgj.com) February 22, 2007 WASHINGTON - The government said Thursday it is canceling Divine Strake, a controversial non-nuclear explosion in the Nevada desert. "I have become convinced that it's time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test," Defense Threat Reduction Agency Director James Tegnelia said in a statement. Divine Strake was planned as a 700-ton test of the nation's ability to defeat underground facilities that produce and store weapons of mass destruction. But it prompted a lawsuit and widespread opposition in Utah and Nevada, where critics feared it would kick up radioactive material from decades-old experiments. Cancellation of Proposed Divine Strake Experiment DTRA Release: Defense Threat Reduction Agency Public Affairs Feb. 22, 2007 The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has decided to cancel the proposed Divine Strake experiment. “I have become convinced that it’s time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test,” said DTRA Director Dr. James A. Tegnelia. This decision was not based on any technical information that indicates the test would produce harm to workers, the general public, or the environment. Divine Strake was a scientific experiment designed to significantly advance the nation’s ability to defeat underground facilities that produce and store weapons of mass destruction. The experiment would have entailed detonating a large amount of a common blasting agent over an existing tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. It was to be the largest in a series of experiments that relied on the specific geology at that location. DTRA will attempt to develop alternative scientific means for obtaining the important data that this experiment would have provided. Such methods to assess capabilities to defeat underground facilities do not currently exist. The agency will develop advanced analysis techniques and conduct confirmatory experiments at a much smaller scale to assist in developing new capabilities to defeat underground facilities. There is a national consensus on the need to improve conventional capabilities to defeat underground targets that pose a threat to the United States. “DTRA remains committed to help develop non-nuclear means to defeat underground targets. I am optimistic that we will succeed,” said Tegnelia. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has decided to cancel the proposed Divine Strake experiment. “I have become convinced that it’s time to look at alternative methods that obviate the need for this type of large-scale test,” said DTRA Director Dr. James A. Tegnelia. This decision was not based on any technical information that indicates the test would produce harm to workers, the general public, or the environment. Divine Strake was a scientific experiment designed to significantly advance the nation’s ability to defeat underground facilities that produce and store weapons of mass destruction. The experiment would have entailed detonating a large amount of a common blasting agent over an existing tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. It was to be the largest in a series of experiments that relied on the specific geology at that location. DTRA will attempt to develop alternative scientific means for obtaining the important data that this experiment would have provided. Such methods to assess capabilities to defeat underground facilities do not currently exist. The agency will develop advanced analysis techniques and conduct confirmatory experiments at a much smaller scale to assist in developing new capabilities to defeat underground facilities. There is a national consensus on the need to improve conventional capabilities to defeat underground targets that pose a threat to the United States. “DTRA remains committed to help develop non-nuclear means to defeat underground targets. I am optimistic that we will succeed,” said Tegnelia.

background : Divine Strake from Federation of American Scientists (website)
U.S. Rep. Matheson (D-UT) opposed Divine Strake : Letter he wrote to DTRA chief Janes Tegnelia .pdf

US_DEFIES_UN_DECISION.doc

More you can do – from Shundahai Network…

Dear Friends,

We hope you were able to submit comments on the Divine Strake Environmental Assessment.

Another thing we can do to stop Divine Strake is to kill its funding. The Budget Continuing Resolution, which will fund government operations until August 2007 has passed the House, and discussion will start in the Senate TODAY Feb 8. This bill already has language in it to cut or restrict the funding for the Yucca Mountain project, and a proposed nuclear fuel reprocessing facility at Savannah River Georgia.

Here is an action everyone should take immediately. Go to your Senator's contact page, starting at www.senate.gov. Send the following email text, inserting the Senator's name, and your name at the end. For good measure, phone them as well, as early in the day as you can. Do this for every Senator whose page will allow a non-constituent to send him/her a message. (some restrict this by zip code) Send this alert by separate email to everyone you know!

Dear Senator __________

I understand that H.J.Res.20 the Budget Continuing Resolution starts discussion in the Senate today. In this bill, there is an entire Title with subsections for elimination of earmarks and for funding adjustments. Among the adjustments in the energy section are cuts to the Yucca Mountain project, as well as specific restrictions on the spending for a mixed oxide fabrication facility at Savannah River GA. Given this precedent of cutting or restricting funding for specific projects within this bill, I respectfully request that an amendment be added to this bill, eliminating the funding for the Divine Strake explosives test.

Sincerely,

___________________________________

Shundahai Network http://www.shundahai.org shundahai@shundahai.org
P.O. Box 1115,Salt Lake City, UT 84110
If you are a Myspace user, you can now add us! http://www.Myspace.com/shundahai

Over a Decade of Resistance
Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain

Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning
"Peace and Harmony with all Creation"

Jan 31, 2007

Divine Strake is back…

Heads up – they’re planning Divine Strake again here in Nevada – 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture on Western Shoshone lands. The original press release from last April is attached – Contact Senator Reid and ask him what he’s doing to stop this test…

From a recent article:

"Hobson said the House wanted to cut $495 million from nuclear weapons accounts, but settled for just $95 million out of deference to Domenici and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., whose states are home to numerous Energy Department facilities."

HAVE YOU SIGNED THE PETITION TO STOP THE DIVINE STRAKE DETONATION AT THE NEVADA TEST SITE?

Full story below:

House approves huge spending bill

A must-pass bill covering about one-sixth of the federal budget swept through the House on Wednesday. A sizable chunk of Republicans joined virtually all Democrats in approving spending increases for education, veterans and the AIDS battle in Africa.

The 286-140 vote - with 57 Republicans voting in favor - was a please surprise for Democrats who expected far less GOP support. The bill had much to please the rank and file, including Republican moderates, even though it contained no pet projects for their districts.

"The content is a heck of a lot better than most expected we'd come up with," said the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis. He worked with his Senate counterpart, Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., to add money for initiatives popular with both Democrats and Republicans.

The overall total would have been even higher had there not been such hurt feelings over how Democrats powered the bill through the House: just an hour of debate time, no amendments allowed.

Republicans also said the measure was not entirely free of parochial "earmarks," saying powerful senators such as Ted Stevens (news, bio, voting record), R-Alaska, and Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., received special treatment for home-state projects.

The White House has signaled that President Bush would sign the bill despite cuts to his requests for NASA, foreign aid and communities affected by the latest round of military base closings.

But numerous agencies are feeling the crunch from operating for four months at or below last year's levels. So the administration was eager for relief for the FBI, the Census Bureau and the Veterans Affairs Department and others.

Republicans also struggled to find unity. Conservatives pressed for a budget freeze to save about $6 billion.

Other lawmakers, including Reps. Jerry Moran (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., and Dave Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., complained about inadequate spending. Moran pushed in vain for $3.3 billion in more money for farm disaster aid. Weldon complained that a $545 million cut to NASA would jeopardize the agency's plans to send man back to the Moon and on to Mars.

Democrats were not entirely pleased with the bill.

It would grant remarkable flexibility to the administration in determining how to use money within agency accounts - and in awarding grants and other projects to lawmakers' districts and states.

Living within last year's budget cap set by Bush - before Democrats won control of Capitol Hill in the November elections - meant they could not be as generous as they would have liked.

Democrats, nonetheless, provided increases for underperforming schools, health research, and grants to state and local law enforcement agencies.

They were especially pleased with a $260 boost, to $4,310, in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students, and with a 40 percent increase, to $4.5 billion, for fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis overseas.

Obey said $3 billion to put the 2005 base closing law in place would be added to an upcoming Iraq war spending bill; that made it easier to bulk up favored domestic accounts.

Republicans contended some money came from phantom savings from highway spending.

In a striking exchange, GOP Rep. David Hobson (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio said Democrats bowed to powerful Republicans needed to pass the bill in the Senate.

Hobson said the House wanted to cut $495 million from nuclear weapons accounts, but settled for just $95 million out of deference to Domenici and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., whose states are home to numerous Energy Department facilities.

Hobson said Democrats acceded to Senate demands to preserve some home-state projects such as $45 million for a much-ridiculed indoor rainforest research in central Iowa.

"If ever there was low-hanging fruit ... this was it," Hobson said.

Obey said that project, obtained two years ago by Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, originally was in a bill that Hobson personally negotiated.

The tally for the measure may have been inflated. It contains a provision blocking lawmakers from receiving their annual cost of living pay raise; some members may have been reluctant to appear to cast a vote that could be interpreted of voting themselves more money.

Agencies winning budget relief in the bill include:

_Veterans Affairs, which would get a $3.6 billion increase for the rapidly growing veterans medical care program.

_The National Institutes of Health, which would receive a $620 million increase for health research grants.

_Amtrak, whose budget would be frozen at $1.3 billion instead of absorbing a $400 million cut proposed by Bush.

_The Census Bureau, which would get money for new computers for field workers conducting the 2010 census.

___ On the Net: House Appropriations Committee: http://appropriations.house.gov/

Groups Demand Real Hearings and an EIS on Divine Strake
(Nuclear Simulation Blast)

The WSDP and HOME will host public session in Reno next week,
Thursday January 18th at 6 pm.

Contact John Hadder or Lee Dazey for location.
We will videotape the public’s comments and submit them to NNSA.

For Immediate Release
Joint Press Release

Contacts: John Hadder, HOME (775) 624-6975; Lee Dazey, WSDP (775) 324-3592; Vanessa Pierce, Heal Utah (801)-364-5110; Peggy Maze Johnson, Citizen Alert (702) 807-1884; and Carrie Dann, WSDP (775) 468-0230, Jeremy Maxand, Snake River Alliance, (208) 344-9161; Deanna Taylor, Blue Sky Institute and or Desert Greens, Green Party of Utah (801) 631-2998; and Eileen McCabe Desert Greens, Green Party of Utah (801) 201-0219

Applauding the recommendations of Nevada and Utah congressional members and former Governor Guinn’s request to Energy Secretary Bodman to complete a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (s-EIS) in preparation for the Divine Strake explosion, the Divine Strake Coalition, including dozens of indigenous, peace, environmental justice, disarmament groups and Western Shoshone leaders, are echoing the dire need for an EIS.

An s-EIS is needed since an activity like Divine Strake was not evaluated in the original EIS (1996) for the NTS. This would allow more public involvement into the purpose for Divine Strake. Concerned citizens fear that the blast, which is predicted to create a 10,000 foot mushroom cloud, will re-suspend long-lived radioactive contaminants in the soil at the Nevada Test Site, putting Western Shoshone communities, Utahns and other civilian downwind populations once again at risk. Citizens are also concerned that information from the test will lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and the resumption of nuclear weapons testing. The formal EIS process requires public involvement prior to the environmental analysis to develop the “scope” of the study, and follow up comment on a draft document.

On December 20th, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) released a revised Environmental Assessment and disclosed their schedule of public information sessions in Las Vegas, Salt Lake and St. George; but these sessions will not include a public hearing on the issue. Instead, NNSA officials said that the public sessions are basically open house meetings where people can look at informational posters and ask questions.

“In our opinion this event is nothing more than a public relations ploy allowing the Pentagon and Department of Energy to shower the public with propaganda.” - HEAL Director Vanessa Pierce.

Outside of Las Vegas, no sessions were scheduled in other areas of Nevada, Idaho, or in Western Shoshone territory where people were exposed to radioactive fallout during the nuclear testing era. Given the decision of the United Nations Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) last March urging the United States to “freeze”, “desist” and “stop” actions being taken, or threatened to be taken, against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation, this is an egregious violation. The UNCERD decision referred to a number of actions and threats including ongoing weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build an unprecedented high-level nuclear waste repository at adjacent Yucca Mountain.

“There is nothing divine about weaponry that’s going to contaminate the water, air and land,” says Western Shoshone grandmother Carrie Dann, Executive Director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, WSDP. “It seems that it is premeditated murder of the future generations. This Administration is not God nor is it sacred or holy.”

The purpose of Divine Strake, an explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that would be 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal has not been clarified.

“Originally the Defense Department’s budget documents identified Divine Strake as necessary to determine the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground targets,” said Lee Dazey with WSDP. “After questions were raised that information from the blast will aid in the design of new nuclear weapons, NNSA officials stepped back, claiming that there were no nuclear applications for the test.”

Groups remain unconvinced that it is conventional weapons that the U.S. would use on deeply buried targets and tunnels because the sheer mass of conventional explosives that would be needed (~0.6 kiloton, i.e. 600 tons of TNT) would be too large to be practical as a conventional weapon.

“The Environmental Assessment skirts around the role that Divine Strake could play in the development of new nuclear weapons since it is politically unpopular and counter to the DOE’s statement that no ‘new nuclear weapons’ are being developed,” said John Hadder of HOME. “One such new nuclear weapon is the “nuclear bunker buster,” which would be consistent with the goals of the Complex 2030 proposal to make the US Nuclear Weapons Complex more ‘responsive’ and ‘capable.’”

Since NNSA public meetings on Divine Strake do not include a formal public comment period where concerned citizens can hear one another’s concerns, Divine Strake coalition member groups in Utah and Nevada are hosting press events and organizational meetings to record these concerns and enter them into the record before the February 7th deadline.

“The Environmental Assessment skirts around the role that Divine Strake could play in the development of new nuclear weapons since it is politically unpopular and counter to the DOE’s statement that no ‘new nuclear weapons’ are being developed,” said John Hadder of HOME. “One such new nuclear weapon is the “nuclear bunker buster,” which would be consistent with the goals of the Complex 2030 proposal to make the US Nuclear Weapons Complex more ‘responsive’ and ‘capable.’”

Since NNSA public meetings on Divine Strake do not include a formal public comment period where concerned citizens can hear one another’s concerns, Divine Strake coalition member groups in Utah and Nevada are hosting press events and organizational meetings to record these concerns and enter them into the record before the February 7th deadline.

Citizen Alert is holding a Press Conference in the Las Vegas Cashman Center Lobby at 5:30 pm this evening and invites the public to come express their concerns.

The WSDP and HOME will host public session in Reno next week, Thursday January 18th at 6 pm. Contact John Hadder or Lee Dazey for location. We will videotape the public’s comments and submit them to NNSA.

Las Vegas January 9, 2007 6:30 – 9:00 pm Cashman Center

Salt Lake January 10, 2007 6:30 – 9:00 pm Energy Solutions Arena

St, George January 11, 2007 6:30 – 9:00 pm Dixie Center

Governor sets Divine Strake hearings

The Salt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated:
01/10/2007

 Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has scheduled two public hearings on Divine Strake, the massive experimental explosion planned by the federal government for the Nevada Test Site. The proposed test, though nonnuclear, is a source of concern for many Utahns who fear that radioactive fallout from past atomic tests at the location might drift into Utah as atomic testing fallout did in the past.

Huntsman will make introductory remarks at the state-sponsored Salt Lake City hearing on Jan. 24. A court reporter will transcribed the comments from that hearing and one in St. George. The remarks will be enclosed in the state's comments to the federal agencies behind Divine Strake.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is accepting written comments through Feb. 7 on its environmental assessment for the test blast. There is no provision for oral comments at the federal meetings being held this week.

Here's the schedule for the state-sponsored hearings:

Jan. 18, 5 - 8 p.m. Dixie State College Dunford Auditorium, Browning Building 225 S. 700 East St. George

Jan. 24, 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. Utah State Capitol, West Building, Room 135 450 N. State Street Salt Lake City

January 03, 2007
From: Vanessa Pierce 
mailto:vanessa@healutah.org

Group Denounces Pentagon's Divine Strake Meeting,
Demands Real Hearings on Blast

For Immediate Release: Jan 3, 2007 For More Information:
Vanessa Pierce, HEAL Utah 801-652-5151 or 801-652-5151
Mary Dickson, Downwinder, 801-232-3471

Outraged upon learning that the scheduled public hearings for the Divine Strake blast will not seek public input on the test, HEAL Utah and downwinders are calling upon Utah’s Congressional Delegation to demand real hearings that allow citizens to voice their concerns about the simulated nuclear detonation.

The group fears that the blast, which is predicted to create a 10,000 foot mushroom cloud, will disperse long-lived radionuclides at the Nevada Test Site, putting Utahns and other civilian populations down-wind once again. The group is also concerned that information from the test will lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and resumed nuclear testing at the test site.

“A hearing implies that public input will be solicited, but this event is nothing more than a public relations ploy allowing the Pentagon and Department of Energy to shower the public with propaganda,” says HEAL Director Vanessa Pierce.

Pierce spoke with a representative from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration today, who told her that next Wednesday’s hearings in St. George and Salt Lake will be an open house format where people can look at informational posters and ask technical questions about the environmental assessment conducted for the test. The public will not, however, be able to voice concerns or offer comments about the decision to conduct the test itself.

The federal government has promised public hearings on Divine Strake in Nevada, Utah and Idaho. However, hearings been scheduled only in Las Vegas, St. George and Salt Lake City.

“The public has never had a voice in Divine Strake,” says Salt Lake City downwinder Mary Dickson. “Just like during the 1950s, our government is clearly not listening to the public. Where is our democracy?”

Says Pierce, “Politics is about protection, not just pork. We urge the Utah Congressional Delegation to do all in its power to obtain real, meaningful public hearings and do everything in their power to stop this test.”

According to Defense Department budget documents, the Divine Strake test is designed to identify the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground targets. Though the Defense Department now claims that there are no nuclear applications for the test, critics maintain that information from the blast will aid in the design of new nuclear weapons.

The blast from this detonation will be 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and will have a yield of .6 kilotons – corresponding to the lowest yield of the B61 nuclear bomb.

“No more mushroom clouds, nuclear or not,” says Dickson. “We must not allow Divine Strake.”

Bush Pushes Nuclear Weapons Development in US

By Sarah Olson
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 01 September 2006

In the face of increased Congressional opposition to US nuclear weapons development, the Bush administration appears to be making an end run around governmental checks and balances. The bizarrely named Divine Strake project is a 700-ton explosive experiment, first scheduled to detonate at the Nevada Test Site in June of this year. Thanks to furious grass-roots opposition to the proposal, Divine Strake has been twice delayed, and is currently projecting a detonation date of no sooner than early 2007.

But as the Department of Defense attempts to justify this explosion, many say the government is simply obfuscating and delaying: the blast, they say, is a simulated nuclear explosion designed to provide important test and calibration data for existing and possibly new nuclear weapons. It will happen at the Nevada Test Site after the elections, and it will kick up a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud potentially full of Cold War-era radioactive dust.

Further, as the UN Security Council deadline for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program passes, and hostilities throughout the Middle East increase, many find the possible threat of US nuclear weapons development to be an unnecessary exacerbation of hostilities. The Bush administration, they say, is engaging belligerent nuclear swashbuckling, and as a result, it is putting US citizens in danger.

What Is Divine Strake and Why Should We Care?

Divine Strake is a planned test explosion managed by the Department of Defense's combat support organization, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). According to DTRA spokesperson Irene Smith, "Divine Strake would consist of a surface detonation of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil, or ANFO, above a tunnel, constructed for multiple research efforts. The amount of explosive was selected to produce the energy needed to cause differing levels of ground shock - severe to light - along the length of the tunnel."

Divine Strake is not a nuclear weapons test; it's also not a conventional weapons test. It is simply 700 tons of explosives deposited into the ground and detonated. According to Smith "Divine Strake would not use a nuclear device or nuclear weapon materials, and would not test a weapon." Perhaps it is the uncertainty of precisely what Divine Strake is all about that has local activists so concerned; that, and the threat of a 700-ton explosive disturbing the Cold War-era radioactive dust.

In addition to postponing the Divine Strake test after activists protested, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the Nevada Test Site, was also forced to withdraw its finding of no significant impact regarding the environmental impact of the explosion at the Nevada Test Site. In a May 26th press release, NNSA announced: "This action is being taken to clarify and provide further information regarding background levels of radiation from global fallout in the vicinity of the Divine Strake experiment. Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by several countries in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the dispersion of radioactive fallout throughout the northern hemisphere. The efforts of the Nevada Site Office are focused on explaining, in a means clearly understandable to all, what background radiation from this fallout means with respect to the contemplated Divine Strake experiment."

According to DTRA's Irene Smith, "NNSA and DTRA are developing a plan that would permit the experiment if it is determined that Divine Strake can be conducted safely, in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, and there is a favorable court ruling on legal proceedings regarding the experiment. DTRA is also assessing other possible sites for the experiment."

Bedford, Indiana was one of those sites until Wednesday when DTRA confirmed it would not seek to detonate Divine Strake in a limestone quarry there. John Blair is the director of the Indiana-based environmental group Valley Watch. "When I learned about Divine Strake coming to Indiana, I sent out an email and I said something kind of bold - that this will only happen over my dead body. And I kind of meant it." With the risk to Indiana averted, Blair says he and other activists will turn some of their attention to helping west coast activists defeat Divine Strake.

There are two largely interconnected types of objection to the Divine Strake explosion. The first is that Divine Strake appears to be a test to simulate a nuclear weapons explosion, and as such it puts the United States on a path towards a new generation of nuclear weapons. The second is that if Divine Strake were to be detonated at the Nevada Test Site, the blast is likely to unsettle radioactive dust from the Cold War-era nuclear tests.

"Slippery Slope"

Utah Congressman Jim Matheson wrote DTRA's director that he was greatly concerned that Divine Strake was an attempt to build low-yield nuclear devices. The DTRA budget, Matheson writes, "states that the demonstration 'will develop a planning tool that will improve the warfighter's confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage.' That sounds like preparation for a low-yield nuclear weapon to me."

While DTRA's Irene Smith declined to comment on whether Divine Strake would provide information for nuclear weapons, she did say that it "is part of the Hard Target Defeat program that develops and demonstrates new weapons, delivery concepts and planning capabilities to defeat hard and deeply buried targets. The improved computer model planning tools that are expected from the Divine Strake experiment could eventually help give combatant commanders greater operational flexibility and confidence in their ability to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets."

In general, DTRA has been reticent on whether they were testing for the effects of nuclear weapons, but they officially declined to rule it out. Hans Kristensen, at the Federation of American Scientists, reported that on April 3rd, DTRA acknowledged in written correspondence that Divine Strake was "a low-yield nuclear weapons calibration simulation against an underground target."

This confirmation alarmed peace and environmental activists. "The reason you want to see the effect of the impact of a weapon is to see if the weapon works," says Vanessa Pierce, director of the environmental advocacy group HEAL Utah.

"This really does represent a slippery slope to creating a new generation of nuclear weapons," says Pierce. She says the Bush administration has consistently pushed for a nuclear weapons program, and Congress has consistently said no.

According to Pierce, Divine Strake represents a thwarting of Congressional will. Traditionally, funding for nuclear weapons goes through the Department of Energy. However, Pierce explains, funding for Divine Strake was obtained through the Department of Defense. By wrapping Divine Strake funding inside the defense budget and decoupling it from traditional nuclear funding sources, the Bush administration succeeded in funding a program that neither Congress nor the public wants.

And this is done in the face of increased global tension regarding nuclear weapons development programs. "The hypocrisy is incredible. You cannot preach temperance from a barstool. And that's precisely what the Bush administration is doing," says Pierce. "Divine Strake sends a message to other nations. It escalates the value of nuclear weapons in the eyes of those who seek to attack this country."

"Children of the Bomb"

J. Truman is the director of Downwinders, an organization advocating for the rights of those downwind from Cold War-era atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site. He was born in 1951, the year the atomic testing started. "It was like a big carnival," Truman says. "We were encouraged to go watch history being made. The government said there was no danger."

First the sheep in the area started dying. Then people began to die too. A 1997 National Cancer Institute Study - the most comprehensive study of the effects of atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site to date - estimated fallout from nuclear weapons testing generated anywhere from 10,000 to 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer. Political activism in the 1980s revealed documents admitting the government knew the danger to downwind populations, even at the time of the tests.

According t0 Truman, this disaster is easily repeatable. "Divine Strake is just a steady step toward resuming testing. Another round of nuclear weapons development could make us all downwinders."

A lawsuit filed on behalf of two Western Shoshone tribes and downwinders from Nevada and Utah is attempting to stop Divine Strake based on these same health concerns. Attorney Robert Hager accused the Department of Defense and Bechtel of Nevada of "junk science" and intentionally failing to conduct proper soil samples.

Toxic exposure expert Richard Miller and Physicians for Social Responsibility both filed papers in support of the lawsuit. Miller wrote that "insufficient research [has been done] regarding the health effects of many of the potential radio isotopes possibly buried in the soil that may be entrained in the dust cloud as a result of the Divine Strake event."

Dr. Thomas Fasy is with the executive committee of the New York chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Fasy argues: "to a reasonable degree of medical and scientific certainty ... the 'Divine Strake' explosion would disperse large amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere ... millions of citizens living downwind ... are at risk of inhaling particles." Fasy also believes "it is virtually certain that this inhalation of radioactive particles would result in an increased frequency of a variety of cancers in the exposed populations. Moreover, the increased risk of developing cancers would be borne disproportionately by the children living downwind."

Opposition to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons development isn't a radical issue for people in the southwest, according to J. Truman. Nearly everyone knows someone who has cancer. Nearly everyone in his generation has been affected by the tests. "Those of us who were children of the bomb are in charge now. We said, 'You're not going to do this to our children. To our grandchildren. No more downwinders. Enough.'"

HEAL Utah's Vanessa Pierce agrees this is an issue shared by many in the west. "When you lose a part of yourself because the federal government put you in harm's way, that's not a transgression you can ever forgive or forget. This goes to the very core of human survival."

"Divine Strake Is an Important Wake-Up Call"

Jacqueline Cabasso is the executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation. She says it's important to understand that Divine Strake is not a nuclear weapons test; it's a test to evaluate the effect of existing nuclear weapons. This distinction should not mollify concern about nuclear weapons use. To the contrary.

"Operationally, nuclear weapons are more fully integrated into the US defense plan than ever before," Cabasso says. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) was previously in charge of all US nuclear weapons; its arsenal has been streamlined to include both nuclear and conventional weapons under the same roof.

Worse still, she says, the US public doesn't fully understand the reality of US nuclear position. "There is no public discussion or debate about US nuclear weapons. Their existence, their purpose, or their future. Yet they are integrally related to our wars."

"In every aspect, the nuclear weapons program is moving forward. Billions of dollars have been spent. This Divine Strake test is a tiny point of this program that has become visible. But there are many interconnected programs also happening just below the radar of public scrutiny." For example, on Wednesday, even as we discussed Divine Strake, the Nevada Test Site was conducting a subcritical nuclear test.

Divine Strake has a certain symbolic importance. The more the US appears to be considering nuclear weapons use - appears to be moving forward with nuclear weapons development and testing - the more other countries will consider themselves in danger. But, Cabasso says, it's important to consider Divine Strake within the context of the existing nuclear arsenal and the ongoing conventional weapons testing. "This is just one of many, many ongoing tests. Divine Strake should be seen as a wake-up call."

CANCEL THE DIVINE STRAKE!


www.stopdivinestrake.com
Deanna L. "Dee" Taylor, Candidate for Salt Lake County Council District 5
Desert Greens Green Party of Utah
www.gput.org ~ www.desertgreens.org
www.deannataylor.org
deanna@desertgreens.org ~ 801-631-2998
http://deesings.livejournal.com
http://community.livejournal.com/stitchforchange
http://community.livejournal.com/grandparenting
http://community.livejournal.com/prog_gparents


"War is not Pro-Life" "You must be the change you want to see in the world."
~ Mahatma Gandhi(1869 - 1948)

Mixed signals received on Test Site blast

DOE says it plans to go ahead with Divine Strake

Despite claims to the contrary, the planned detonation of 700 tons of chemical explosives at the Nevada Test Site is not quite dead. In a U.S. District Court hearing conducted by telephone last week, government officials said they had no immediate plans to move forward with the fuel oil-ammonium nitrate explosion, and agreed to a stipulation that the earliest the test could go forward would be September. Designed to simulate an atomic-sized blast on underground structures, the explosion was originally scheduled for June 2 but has been postponed because of the court challenge.

Kevin Rohrer, an Energy Department spokesman working in Las Vegas, said Monday that his agency continues to work on the project: "We have not scrubbed it, canceled it, or whatever. We are still moving forward pending the outcome of the litigation."

In Washington, however, congressional members got conflicting information about the blast, leaving them with little insight into the Defense Department's intentions or schedule.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she had been told as recently as Monday that the Defense Department had indefinitely postponed the blast, only to learn later in the day that Energy Department officials in Nevada were laying the groundwork for the explosion.

"They're double-talking. If it's postponed indefinitely, then why are they going forward with it, doing all this planning?" asked her spokesman, David Cherry. "Until such time that she is satisfied that the test can be done safely, she will not sign off on it. She is opposed." A spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he believes the test will go off in the fall.

Reid has supported the test as a way to develop conventional weaponry that could be strong enough to knock out underground targets, but he has reserved the option to reconsider if the blast is shown to have ties to nuclear weaponry or if the testing is harmful to residents.

At the heart of the current legal challenge is a question about the blast's potential to pick up and transport particles out of the test area. Critics fear those particles might include radioactive material from the years of above and below-ground nuclear testing at the site. The Energy Department, in an environmental assessment prepared earlier this year and a follow-up notice in May, said there would be "no significant impact" from the test, but withdrew those findings this month "to re-evaluate the existing data, analyses and conclusions." The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection must grant a permit for the test blast, dubbed "Divine Strake," to proceed.

Rohrer said the federal government has an obligation under federal law to obtain the state permit before it can proceed: "We have firm requirements under the Clean Air Act. We have been working vigorously with the state."

The Energy Department, which manages the Test Site, is working on the environmental documentation, while the test itself would be conducted by the Defense Department.

Attorney Robert Hager, who on behalf of the Winnemucca Indian Colony and other residents near the Test Site has been pressing for stricter oversight of the government's plans, said he worries that the government will continue to move forward with "junk science" and without adequate environmental review.

"I am more concerned today than I was when they pulled the plug on this two weeks ago," he said after last week's court ruling. "This is good news for the downwinders - they know they won't be breathing radioactive dust at least until September."

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Department agency conducting the test, has agreed to public meetings on the issue once the lawsuit is resolved. A Senate staffer said those meetings could come later this summer.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said it remains unclear whether the test can be conducted safely. The Defense Department "has assured me that the test will not go forward until we have the environmental data I've requested in hand, we've had time to analyze it, and the public has been fully informed," Hatch said in a statement.

Republican Rep. Jon Porter, who along with Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons supports the project as part of continued weapons testing, said he trusts the state to determine whether the blast is safe for Nevadans. Funding for the project expires at the end of September 2007. Critics, among them arms-control advocates, have charged that the blast is a step toward a new, nuclear "bunker busting" weapon. Defense Department officials say the test could help them develop either a conventional or nuclear weapon.

Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, said in a report last month that countries should not pursue low-yield nuclear weapons for fear of creating a new arms race.

"Of particular concern would be the adoption of doctrines and weapon systems that blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons, or lower the nuclear threshold. Such modifications could over time have a domino effect and give rise to a renewed demand to resume nuclear testing," according the report issued by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, of which Blix is chairman.

"We're going to be asking our (elected officials) to demand a full-blown environmental impact statement," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a Nevada-based group opposed to the planned test. "We want more people and more science."

Launce Rake can be reached at 259-4127 or at lrake@lasvegassun.com. Lisa Mascaro can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at lisa.mascaro@lasvegassun.com. All contents C 1996 - 2006 Las Vegas Sun, Inc.

June 3, 2006
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NV_MUSHROOM_CLOUD_NVOL-?SITE=NVRE N&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Tribal leaders lead protest Nevada Test Site's `Divine Strake'

By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press Writer

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Tribal leaders were among about 50 protesters who rallied Saturday against an experiment at the Nevada Test Site they fear will produce a massive explosion that will spread radioactivity across the West.

The protest is aimed at the federal government's proposed "Divine Strake" project, the detonation of 700 tons of explosives in an experiment designed to study ground motion and shock waves set off by bombs.

"There is nothing divine about something that is built for destruction of life," said Carrie Dann, a member of the Western Shoshone tribe who maintains the test site's property belongs to her people.

"It is just another weapon of destruction. We need to all stand up and say `Hell no, we don't want this stuff around here.' We don't need it. We have enough weapons," she told fellow demonstrators in front of the federal courthouse in Reno.

Several carried signs that read "Nevada is not a nuclear wasteland," "War Industries Don't Care" and "Blessed are the Peacemakers."

"The weapons designers have been chomping at the bit to make a new type of weapon, although the U.S. is supposedly `committed' to not developing new nuclear weapons in the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation," said John Hadder of Citizen Alert the statewide anti-nuclear organization.

The test originally planned for June 2 but has been postponed indefinitely. Officials said delaying the explosion would allow time to answer legal and scientific questions about whether it would kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Concerns first were raised when James Tegnelia, director of the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said the blast "is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons." He later retracted the statement, saying it was inaccurate.

Designers said the blast would be of the same material but some 280 times larger than the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Lee Dazey of the Western Shoshone Defense Project said the explosion will create a plume 10,000 feet in the atmosphere and be carried downwind. She's especially concerned about the lack of data National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) to determine the radioactive contamination in the soils surrounding the blast area that will be lifted by the plume.

"Western Shoshone bore the brunt of the Cold War nuclear weapon program receiving doses of radiation from 100 aboveground tests estimated to be six times that of other non-Indian downwind populations," Dazey said.

C 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

--- Pictures if you go to the URL.

BT

Protesters rally against bomb test in desert

Carla Roccapriore (CROCCAPRIORE@RGJ.COM)
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
June 4, 2006

Experimenting with bombs at the Nevada Test Site is hypocritical of a government that speaks peace and can be likened to that of Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, demonstrators said Saturday.

Between 50 and 75 people walked from West Street Plaza through downtown Reno to the Bruce R. Thompson Federal Building to ask Nevada's congressional delegation to demand Divine Strake not be postponed but cancelled.

"This is the first step toward testing nukes again," said protester Rich Haber, 59, of Reno.

Divine Strake, also known as a "mushroom cloud" test, is a 700-ton non-nuclear explosion of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that would occur on Western Shoshone land near the federally occupied Nevada Test Site.

The 10,000-foot high explosion was scheduled for June 23 but was postponed indefinitely last week so further studies could be done.

"It's not only going to hurt the Indian people, it'll hurt all of us," said Mary McCloud, 76, of Schurz.

"What nation are they after and what nation will they use it on?" she asked. "The Bush administration talks about peace. But when you're doing this, where is the peace? When they (U.S.) did the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, how many people were affected?"

No counter-protesters were at the Reno rally.

Jack Finn, spokesman for U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the senator's office has been in close contact with agencies involved.

"It has not been our office's position that the test should be cancelled," Finn said by telephone after the rally. "It seemed every safety precaution has been taken."

The federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency claims the explosion will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets, the Associated Press has reported.

Carrie Dann, executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said nuclear weapons are destroying the rights of future generations while politicians today are preoccupied with amending the Constitution to define marriage between a man and woman.

"Before that, the Constitution needs to say that water and air contamination is a crime," said Dann, 72.

Len Schweitzer of Reno said testing and developing new weapons won't deter terrorism.

"There will never be enough bullets or bombs to end terrorism because terrorism is an expression of discomfort people feel," said Schweitzer, 69. "We can overcome terrorism, not destroy it by warfare."

Speakers also discussed radioactive contamination in the soil that occurred about 50 years earlier at the Nevada Test Site and caused nearby dwellers to get ill and their crops and game to become contaminated.

'Divine Strake' detonation halted

June 05, 2006  by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413084

Carrie Dann arrested at Nevada Test Site

MERCURY, Nev. - The ''Divine Strake'' detonation has been halted, but Western Shoshone continued their protest at the Nevada Test Site over Memorial Day weekend to demand respect for Western Shoshone land rights at the site, as stated in the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863.

Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone grandmother, was among 45 people arrested after they crossed the boundary onto the Nevada Test Site in an act of civil disobedience. Security from the site and Nye County sheriff's deputies arrested them and placed them in a holding facility.

''Enough is enough,'' Dann told the crowd before being arrested, which resounded the ''Ya basta!'' (''Enough is enough!'') battle cry of the Zapatistas fighting for indigenous rights in Mexico.

Glenn Morris, attorney, university professor and member of the Colorado Chapter of the American Indian Movement, was arrested. Morris told officers that they were in violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution.

''This is treaty land,'' said several Western Shoshone as they were arrested. Non-Western Shoshone received permits to be on the land from the Western Shoshone Nation Council.

Julie Fishel, attorney and advocate for the Western Shoshone Defense Council, and Steven Newcomb, Indian Country Today columnist, were among the 30 women and 15 men arrested.

The women formed a circle in the detention area and sang a warrior song, receiving applause from some officers.

''It doesn't have to be hostile, it can be done in a good way,'' Fishel told Indian Country Today. She said it was the first time she was arrested and as an attorney considered the choice carefully. She said her decision was based on the lawlessness in this country and the United States' refusal to honor decisions of the United Nations, while continuing to violate Western Shoshone and indigenous human rights.

Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, Tom Goldtooth, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Tupac Enrique, of Tonatierra in Phoenix, led the day's events, which centered on tradition and respect for mother earth. Several hundred people attended the protest and march to the Nevada Test Site. The 45 arrested were cited and released.

The 700-ton explosion named Divine Strake was halted after Western Shoshone filed a lawsuit in federal court and 42 national and international organizations joined forces, including environmental justice, environmental, political, nonproliferation activists, peace activists and indigenous groups.

The ''Not so Divine Strake Protest'' turned into a victory celebration for Western Shoshone, environmental activists and downwinders May 28 at the Nevada Test Site. Downwinders, those who could be affected by the release of radioactive particles from previous blasts, celebrated in Western states including Utah, Idaho and Montana.

''Now, we'll call it a victory party,'' said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, the Nevada-based environmental justice organization.

The Nevada Site Office of the National Nuclear Security Administration announced it would withdraw its Finding of No Significant Impact related to the environmental assessment.

''This action is being taken to clarify and provide further information regarding background levels of radiation from global fallout in the vicinity of the Divine Strake experiment. Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by several countries in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the dispersion of radioactive fallout throughout the northern hemisphere,'' the NNSA said.

Attorney Robert Hager earlier assembled a national and international team of attorneys and professionals who filed affidavits on behalf of Western Shoshone plaintiffs to halt it.

''We owe so much to these people, who have such incredible knowledge that when the government saw the strength of their credentials, [it] blinked,'' Hager said.

Two Western Shoshone tribes and individual Western Shoshone Indians and downwinders from Nevada and Utah asked a federal judge in Las Vegas for a second time to stop the huge aboveground explosion. The blast was first scheduled for June 2, then cancelled and rescheduled for June 23 after the lawsuit was filed on April 20.

Radioactive fallout from the blast was predicted that would result in cancers. Children were the most likely victims.

Experts filing documents in the case include Dr. Thomas Fasy, member of the executive committee of the New York City Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Richard Miller, a toxic exposures expert from Houston, who authored the five-volume U.S. Atlas of Nuclear Fallout, according to a written statement by the plaintiffs.

Fasy wrote that ''to a reasonable degree of medical and scientific certainty ... the Divine Strake explosion would disperse large amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere.''

He stated that millions of citizens living downwind are at risk of inhaling particles.

''It is virtually certain that this inhalation of radioactive particles would result in an increased frequency of a variety of cancers in the exposed populations,'' Fasy said. ''Moreover, the increased risk of developing cancers would be borne disproportionately by the children living downwind.''

Miller described the Department of Energy's ''insufficient research regarding the health effects of many of the potential radioisotopes possibly buried in the soil that may be entrained in the dust cloud as a result of the Divine Strake event.''

Miller and Fasy warn that entire communities may be exposed to radioisotopes, including alpha emitters such as americium-241 - an acknowledged carcinogen.

Hager also asked federal District Judge Lloyd George to find that the planned blast would violate the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the congressional ban on the development of new nuclear weapons.

John Burroughs, executive director of the New York City-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, filed a declaration in support.

Burroughs said the Divine Strake test ''reflects a doctrine of war fighting in which nuclear weapons could be used first, against states not possessing nuclear weapons, in an integrated fashion with non-nuclear forces.''

Burroughs said this ''is wholly inconsistent with a 'diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies' agreed by the United States in 2000 and a central element of compliance with the disarmament obligation.''

Hager criticized Bechtel, of Nevada, and the federal Departments of Defense and Energy for ''procedural genuflection'' by filing papers in a thinly disguised attempt to comply with environmental administrative procedures.

Hager claimed that the government agencies and Bechtel have engaged in ''junk science'' and have ''intentionally failed'' to conduct proper sampling of the soil, and has asked the court to halt any further ''testing'' by Bechtel and government agencies based on alleged conflict of interest. Nye County Sheriff's Office officials did not return phone calls for comment by press time.

DIVINE STRAKE : MEDIA ADVISORY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: 2 June 2006
CONTACTS:
Lee Dazey, 324-4027, ldazey@mindspring.com;
John Hadder, 827-4200, hadder@citizenalert.org;
Laura Fillmore, (775)450-8727, fillmore4@charter.net

NEVADANS CALL FOR CANCELLATION (NOT POSTPONEMENT)
of the DIVINE STRAKE TEST! RENO

NV – Tomorrow, Saturday, June 3rd, Nevadans will call upon their Congressional Delegation to cancel Divine Strake through a march and rally at the Bruce R. Thompson federal building in Reno. There has been a postponement of the June 23rd 700-ton explosion of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that was to be detonated in an area of the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone homeland where six nuclear tests occurred. Divine Strake is a violation of Western Shoshone rights. On March 10, 2006, the U.N. Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (CERD) urged the U.S. to “desist from all activities planned and/or conducted on the ancestral lands of Western Shoshone, which are being carried out without consultation with, and despite protests of, the Western Shoshone peoples.” Divine Strake is not friendly or safe and is a precursor to development of low-yield nuclear weapons, representing a major policy shift previous U.S. Administrations goals toward disarmament and non-proliferation goals.

WHAT: “River of Peace” march from West Street Plaza (Brick Park) along the Truckee River to the Bruce R. Thompson Federal Building where Nevadans will rally and call upon the Nevada Congressional Delegation to deny permit to the National Nuclear Security Agency for the Divine Strake test. The rally at the federal building will include a presentation by Western Shoshone grandmother Carrie Dann, other speakers, as well as Native American singers and drummers.

WHEN: Saturday, June 3rd, 3:30 - 5:30 PM

WHERE: Marchers will gather at West Street Plaza (Brick Park) on First Street (between Arlington and West Streets) in downtown Reno at 3:30 pm and march to the Bruce R. Thompson Federal Building where the rally will commence at 4:30 pm. “This is a direct violation of the CERD finding and an affront to our religious belief that mother earth is sacred and should not be harmed. All people who are opposed to these actions by the U.S. should step forward and make their opposition known.” -- Chief Raymond Yowell of the Western Shoshone National Council. ON THE WEB: Divine Strake & Coalition, http://www.shundahai.org/index.html & Reno AntiWar Coalition, http://renopeace.org

“RIVER OF PEACE” MARCH/RALLY:
TELL NEVADA OFFICIALS TO CANCEL DIVINE STRAKE

The DIVINE STRAKE COALITION, made up of Indigenous, environmental justice, peace, anti war and nuclear abolition groups, is calling for the cancellation of “Divine Strake”, a massive explosion 50 times larger than any weapon in the U.S. weapon arsenal. “Divine Strake” was set to be exploded June 23rd on Western Shoshone lands at the Nevada Test Site where the U.S. has conducted 928 above ground and underground nuclear tests; but has been postponed. Call upon Nevada officials to permanently cancel Divine Strake!

The massive 700-ton explosion of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil would take place in an area at the Nevada Test Site 1.1 miles from where six nuclear tests were detonated, raising the specter that nuclear contaminants may become re-suspended in the atmosphere. Divine Strake is not friendly or safe and is a precursor to development of low-yield nuclear weapons, representing a serious reversal of the United State’s commitment to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This test is also a violation of Western Shoshone rights. On March 10, 2006, the U.N. Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (CERD) urged the U.S. to “desist from all activities planned and/or conducted on the ancestral lands of Western Shoshone, which are being carried out without consultation with, and despite protests of, the Western Shoshone peoples.”

"We decry all weapons of mass destruction as they are first tested upon us; and we oppose the use of these weapons against any other peoples or nations." Western Shoshone Carrie Dann

Call upon Nevada leaders to cancel Divine Strake!!
Join “River of Peace March” in Reno
Saturday, June 3rd, 3:30 pm
West Street Plaza on the Truckee River (directions below)

The “River of peace” march will start at West Street Plaza at 4 pm and end at the Bruce R. Thompson federal building (400 S. Virginia) for a rally at 4:30 and presentations at 5 pm. Western Shoshone grandmother and leader Carrie Dann will speak along with other speakers and Native singers
(West Street Plaza is in downtown Reno on First Street between Arlington St. and West St. across from the First United Methodist Church)

Contact info: John Hadder, hadder@citizenalert.org ; Lee Dazey, ldazey@mindspring.com; Laura Fillmore fillmore4@charter.net
For Information about Divine Strake & Coalition www.shundahai.org/divine_strake.htm http://www.shundahai.org/divine_strake.htm

Native Americans protest planned non-nuclear blast at test site

By MARK WAITE
PVT

Darlene Graham, a resident of the Duckwater Indian Reservation in northeastern Nye County, said she never understood why her 32-year-old brother died of throat cancer back in 1983. He didn't smoke.

Graham suspects the testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s killed her brother. The family grew their own vegetables and butchered their own cattle, she said, on ground that could have been contaminated. She raised her nephew and niece.

"They told me I could apply for compensation for my nephew and niece after my brother passed away," Graham said. "I filled out all my paperwork and they said it was the wrong type of cancer. Because of my brother I'm doing this protest. What's happening on our land."

Duckwater residents aren't usually thought of as downwinders, the people who lived downwind of above-ground nuclear bomb blasts in the 1950s. Most people think of Utahns.

But Graham was one of a handful of Indians protesting the proposed Divine Strake bomb blast, scheduled for June 23. They fear it will stir up old radioactive material.

A few protesters held signs in front of Tonopah's Scolari's Supermarket May 9 and walked down Main Street the following day. They plan to protest the blast in communities along U.S. Highway 95 including Goldfield, Beatty, Lathrop Wells and Mercury. Protesters carried sweet-smelling sage, a cow's horns and were beating a drum.

The protest includes overall issues of Indian rights, including the Treaty of Ruby Valley, which dates to 1864.

"Seventy million acres is Shoshone land we're still fighting for," said Johnnie Bobb of Austin.

The National Nuclear Security Administration reported a finding of no significant impact had been issued Jan. 30 for the Divine Strake test.

It will be a detonation of 700 tons of heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil-emulsion, a blasting agent, placed in a charge hole 32 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep, set off by 30 pounds of C-4 explosive to initiate the detonation.

The device has been used before at the U.S. Department of Defense's White Sands facility in New Mexico, according to the environmental assessment. It will be the equivalent of 593 tons of TNT.

The explosion will be at an uncontaminated site within the Nevada Test Site, the EA states.

"The site of the proposed Divine Strake detonation (the U16b tunnel) has never been used for any type of nuclear testing activity, and radioactive contamination does not exist within the area impacted by the blast. Therefore the proposed action would not result in the suspension or dispersion of radioactive materials or human exposure to radioactive materials."

Health physicist Lynn Aspaugh, who contributed to a National Academy of Sciences report on the proposed test, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Personally I doubt that enough radioactive materials would be re-suspended so that it could be measured above background (radiation) down wind of the NTS."

But residents remain skeptical. Several dozen southern Utah residents demonstrated against the explosion Saturday in St. George, Utah.

Arvilla Mascarenas, a member of the Shoshone Duckwater tribe, said she doesn't know of anything "divine" about the blast. She signed on as one of the Duckwater Reservation residents appealing the blast in U.S. District Court.

The government assessment doesn't seem to assure her.

"I don't understand why everything that's happening down at the test site is happening," Mascarenas said. "Why do they want to set off this 700-pound blast? It's going to bring up everything from the soil below from the nuclear blasts they set off in the '50s. It's going to be floating in our air again. We're going to have more people getting sick.

"Do they think the Shoshone people don't matter? They say it's not going to be dangerous but still they want to be testing this stuff. If it's going to hurt our people here, why do they want to set it off? Do they want to kill more people?"

Mascarenas said she lived in Duckwater until she was 8 years old, then moved away. She moved to the Logandale-Glendale area in northeastern Clark county for 10 years where she said more people were dying of cancer. Mascarenas said her nephew died of leukemia in his late teens, her sister-in-law died when she was in her 30s.

"I hope they don't go through with it," she said. "It's just a little bunch of people that are complaining. The big shots in Washington they do what they want. So you don't have a choice."

Jack LaMotte, another Duckwater Reservation resident, also signed on as a plaintiff opposing the test. LaMotte, who said he has worked with Citizen Alert, an anti-nuclear organization, and the Dann sisters in Crescent Valley, a group fighting for Indian rights.

LaMotte said a lot of people on the Duckwater Reservation were exposed to fallout from nuclear tests in the 1950s.

"Why don't they wait until the wind blows south?" LaMotte said. "Why don't they wait to blow it over Vegas if it's that safe and no problem?

"That's what I think. They say there's not going to be any kind of harmful chemicals coming out here, so why don't they just send it over Vegas? Prevailing winds are always going to the east. Is it because we're the poorer part of the area?"

Many people on the isolated Duckwater reservation don't find out about planned experiments at the test site until it's too late, LaMotte said. The Duckwater reservation is 15 miles off U.S. Highway 6 at Currant, or about 150 miles northeast of Tonopah.

"Out here in Duckwater not too many people we know get the newspaper ... we're pretty isolated. A lot of the information by the time I hear about it it's already old news. Once people found out what's going on, why do they wait until the wind blows north? That's what a lot of people said.

"Everybody knows what a zillion pounds of explosives is going to do. Why do it? Just to film it? They're using the same stuff in Oklahoma City that blew up that building. Just because they're making it bigger, you can use a computer and have simulations. It's just a waste of money, its jeopardizing people's health. When nuclear blasts went off they said the same thing and up here some people can remember that white ash and playing around in it when they were kids."

The National Nuclear Safety Administration said the explosion will be to test the bunker-busting ability of the blast.

The Western States Legal Foundation charges that the Defense Department February 2006 budget states the program will go nuclear in the future.

The Indian rights organization states that Divine Strake "will develop a planning tool that will improve the war fighter's confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage."

Sonia Carleto, a resident of the Yomba Indian Reservation in northern Nye County, said most motorists passing by have been supportive, honking their horns or waving. "You have your few, unfriendly people, but not many," she said.

"Many people think it's not going to affect me," Carleto said. "It may not affect that one person, as an individual, but it will affect their families, mark my words."

Johnnie Bobb, an Austin resident, was concerned about protecting the long-term environment of Mother Earth.

"It's very important for us to keep it clean. Even if people say they've been here 15 years and nothing happened to me."

-- STOP THE DIVINE STRAKE! Deanna L. "Dee" Taylor, Candidate for Salt Lake County Council District 5 Desert Greens Green Party of Utah www.gput.org~~www.desertgreens.org deanna@desertgreens.org~~801-631-2998 "You must be the change you want to see in the world." ~ Mahatma Gandhi(1869 - 1948)

From: shundahai@shundahai.org
May 11, 2006

Stop Divine Strake May 28 Protest is Still On!

Hello friends,

You have perhaps read one of the many news articles proclaiming that Divine Strake has been postponed. While this is good news, we are pushing for cancellation. To that end, we are researching legal grounds for cancellation, including improper or inadequate notification and solicitation of comments and inadequate soil testing in the vicinity of the site, legislative avenues regarding the "will of Congress," and finally direct action.

THE PROTEST ON MAY 28 AT THE NEVADA TEST SITE IS STILL ON!!!

We have been hearing from activists and concerned people from as far away as Oregon and New York who are planning on coming. There are solidarity events being planned in Minnesota and Maine. We will shortly be providing more information on actions that can be taken locally to apply pressure to cancel this test.

We have updated the information on our Divine Strake page with a map and directions, and will shortly update it with links to information on Western Shoshone protocol. Because people are coming from so far away, we have committed to providing camp logistics for this event, and we are investigating the possibility of serving up to 3 simple meals at the event. To do this we need your help. We are anticipating a large turnout for this event. To properly prepare, we need some idea of how many people are coming. Please email us at shundahai@shundahai.org to let us know you will be attending. To cover the expenses of transporting equipment, and possibly providing meals, we need your financial support. If each of those planning on attending were to send us $10, we could cover these costs.

Please be generous, and help us to fund this event, as well as our lean daily operations. Please go to our website www.shundahai.org, and click on the "Make a Donation" button to donate through PayPal, or click on the "Support" link at the bottom of the left sidebar for other ways to donate. We look forward to seeing you on May 28, or hearing about your local solidarity protests.

Thank you

Shundahai Network
www.shundahai.org
P.O. Box 1115
Salt Lake City, UT 84110
Phone- 801.533.0128 Fax- 801.533.0129 shundahai@shundahai.org

Online Fundraising Store- www.cafepress.com/shundahainet
If you are a Myspace user, you can now add us! www.Myspace.com/shundahai

Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony with all Creation"

Anti-blast rally in St. George

Protesters to speak out against 'Divine Strake' Saturday

By Nancy Perkins
Deseret Morning News
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635206882,00.htm

ST. GEORGE - Protesters are planning a rally on Saturday in St. George to speak out against the federal government's plan to detonate a massive explosion in the Nevada desert next month.

"We feel like we need to put some fire under people," said St. George resident Hughette Nordin, who is organizing the protest planned at Bluff Street Park, 600 N. Bluff Street, from 8 a.m. to noon. "We want people to really know what's going on."

The grass-roots effort is focused on stopping "Divine Strake," a 700-ton ammonium-nitrate and fuel-oil explosive to be detonated June 23 over an existing tunnel complex at the Nevada Test Site, about 135 miles southwest of St. George.

The blast had been scheduled for June 2, but the date was pushed back pending a lawsuit filed by the Western Shoshone Indian Tribe and others over concerns that the explosion will disturb contaminants left over from previous nuclear tests. Hundreds of nuclear tests were conducted about eight miles west of the proposed blast site between 1950 and 1992.

Thousands of people now suffering from various cancers say their health problems stem from radiation released by those nuclear tests. The federal government's Radiation Compen- sation Exposure Act provides a one-time settlement from $50,000 to $100,000 to downwinders who qualify under the program's guidelines.

Helene Stone, another St. George resident involved in the planned protest, moved to St. George from Ventura, Calif., in 2001. "I wouldn't have moved here if I'd known that resumption of these tests was a possibility," she said.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Site Office and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in a report released Tuesday, said the detonation of Divine Strake is perfectly safe and should go forward.

"Divine Strake is a one-time experiment and most of the impacts are expected to be brief and transient in nature, and will not result in significant impacts to the environment or to human health or safety," the eport said.

The explosive material will be placed in a charge hole about 32 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep above a limestone tunnel complex. High-speed cameras will be installed to record damage to the tunnel, while other equipment will measure and record ground motion and other effects of the blast.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman last month spoke out against the testing, and repeated his opposition to the blast on Thursday through his spokesman, Mike Mower. "We feel that testing shouldn't take place when we are downwind," said Mower. "Utahns have suffered generations of adverse effects due to prior testing in Nevada."

Saturday's protest is intended to educate people about past nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site and to rally support against further weapons tests. Stone said organizers would ask those attending the rally to urge Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett to stop Divine Strake.

"Sen. Hatch said he can stop these tests, so why doesn't he?" Stone said. "We have enough information to know that this test is unnecessary. Now is the time to stand up against it. We hope our senators are listening."

STOP THE DIVINE STRAKE! Deanna L. "Dee" Taylor, Candidate for Salt Lake County Council District 5 Desert Greens Green Party of Utah www.desertgreens.org deanna@desertgreens.org~~801-631-2998

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

~ Mahatma Gandhi(1869 - 1948)

Debate on blast safety heats up
Test may shake up some nasty stuff, critics argue

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune ,
the article at Salt Lake Tribune
May 11, 2006

WASHINGTON - An environmental consultant who has studied the Nevada Test Site says there is likely radioactive contamination at the location where the Pentagon plans to conduct a major explosives test, potentially dispersing the contaminants.

Richard L. Miller, author of two books on nuclear fallout from atomic testing, identified six tests conducted in the 1950s that could have spread contamination over the area where the Pentagon plans to detonate 700 tons of explosives in a test called Divine Strake.

The radioactive remnants of those tests are long-lasting, Miller said, and he is not convinced there has been the rigorous testing of soil samples that would be needed to guarantee the test area is clean.

"For sure, we've had some pretty nasty shots just east of there," said Miller. "Any time you have a radio isotope and you can inhale it or ingest it, yeah, it's a health issue."

But Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which operates the Nevada Test Site, said extensive tests have shown the Divine Strake test site is not contaminated.

And Lynn Anspaugh, a University of Utah expert in radiobiology, said he doubts that radiation would be detectable outside of the Nevada Test Site.

The Divine Strake test is planned next month to measure the shaking of the ground and damage to a below-ground tunnel to help build computer models.

Pentagon budget documents originally said the information would help war planners use the smallest possible nuclear weapon to destroy a buried target, but officials have since said the inclusion of the word "nuclear" was a mistake.

The explosion will be nearly 50 times bigger than the largest conventional weapon, leaving a crater 196 feet across and throwing up a plume of dust that is expected to reach 10,000 feet.

The question of radioactive contamination has been raised by Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Jim Matheson, both of Utah, who have asked for detailed mapping of the contamination surrounding the Divine Strake site.

The Winnemucca Indian Colony and a group of downwinders - people who have contracted cancer believed to be caused by their exposure to fallout from Cold War nuclear tests - have sued to stop the Divine Strake test and succeeded in having it postponed until after June 23 from its originally scheduled June 2 date.

Environmental officials in Nevada have also demanded additional data from NNSA to ensure the test will comply with the state's air quality standards.

Miller, whose academic background is in sociology, works as an environmental consultant in Texas, doing commercial work and testifying as an expert witness in legal cases. He has written an atlas of fallout from nuclear tests in the United States, spent eight years with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and studied whether incidences of brain cancer were tied to fallout. His biography describes him as an industrial health specialist with field experience in coordinating more than 500 safety and health investigations.

Miller identified six tests from the 1950s - Turk, Coulomb B, Kepler, Galileo, Shasta and Smoky - that were within eight miles of the Divine Strake site and could have spread contamination over the area where the Divine Strake test is scheduled to occur. He said the testing for contamination should be more scientifically based and rigorous.

"They may go in and take 100 core samples of the area that is going to turn into a dust cloud. They may do it and find there's nothing there. Well, good for them. My hat's off, but they need to be absolutely sure what's entrained in that dust cloud. Otherwise there's going to be a problem," Miller said.

Morgan said there were 165 radiation tests conducted in the area between where Divine Strake is set to take place and an adjacent area where past underground testing had been conducted, and no surface contamination was found. In addition, there were aerial surveys conducted in 1970, 1983, 1992 and 1994, which also found no radiological material.

"We have a very strong grasp on the environmental condition at the test site. We have to understand it, we have to know it, we have to be able to say what's there, what's going on, on a regular basis," Morgan said. "There are no man-made radioactive constituents there." Anspaugh said he does not think the Divine Strake test will be "a big deal."

The tests Miller is referring to happened 50 years ago, Anspaugh said, and since then there have been roughly 900 additional tests at the Nevada Test Site.

"If there's going to be any significant amount of material re-suspended it's going to be due to the ground shockwave and we've already done that type of thing 900 times in the interim," Anspaugh said. "I just can't get very excited about it."

However, Anspaugh, who was on a National Academies of Science panel that studied the effects of a nuclear bunker buster, said he is perplexed about what could be learned from the test, since there is already extensive data on large-scale blasts and ground shock.
(emphasis added)
--

STOP THE DIVINE STRAKE! Deanna L. "Dee" Taylor, Candidate for Salt Lake County Council District 5 Desert Greens Green Party of Utah www.desertgreens.org deanna@desertgreens.org~~801-631-2998

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

~ Mahatma Gandhi(1869 - 1948)

FYI. Good news, we have a small victory - the Divine Strake test has been postponed - we want it cancelled. These are Western Shoshone lands and the Western Shoshone National Council says no further military testing - the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination agrees. The May 28th Day of Action at the Peace Camp across from the Nevada Test Site is still scheduled to call attention to this issue. Details to follow.

Subject: test site bomb delayed
LAS VEGAS -- A non-nuclear explosion expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert will be postponed at least three weeks, while a federal court reviews plans for the blast, test officials said Tuesday.

"The planned Divine Strake experiment will not be conducted earlier than June 23," said Cheri Abdelnour, spokeswoman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Va. The blast was originally scheduled for June 2.

...

In documents filed Monday with U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, federal Justice Department lawyers sought to push back from May 23 until early June a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders" to block the blast. The judge did not issue an immediate ruling.

Nevada Division of Environmental Protection spokesman Dante Pistone also said Tuesday his agency was reviewing a revised environmental assessment that test planners filed Friday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/09/AR20060 50901461.html

There is Nothing Divine About a Bomb Test

The first I heard of Divine Strake was last month. I was standing a few feet from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site where the experiment will happen. Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone elder, winkingly gave me permission to enter the U.S. government-run, restricted-access site as his guest, since, if you believe the treaty the government signed, his people still own the land. I declined his invitation - I didn't have time to go to jail. Still, he and I stood together, holding hands, our heads bowed in prayer, or in respect for the prayers of others, as a religious service was held in the nuclear dust. This Catholic mass welcomed the Shoshone spiritual leader, a Jewish man wearing a tallit and reading from the Torah, a Mennonite, an Episcopal priest, a Jesuit priest, a Zen priest, a Methodist minister, an elderly nun in microfleece pants and sneakers, a former Marine officer, a hibakusha (Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb), my husband Chris, and me. It was a fine American exercise in people of many faiths coming together, talking through difference, wishing for peace, and petitioning our government.

Divine Strake is the code name for a massive non-nuclear test planned for June 2. An explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - ANFO - will send a mushroom cloud perhaps 10,000 feet into the Nevada sky. This gigantic experimental blast will use 280 times the amount of ANFO that demolished Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and damaging or destroying more than 300 buildings. Some experts worry the test is a precursor to developing a nuclear bunker-buster bomb. I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether to test, but Utahns, downwind from so many nuclear tests that were supposed to be safe, yet turned out to be deadly, can be forgiven if they're wary.

After Sept. 11 nearly five years ago, some Americans began to wonder why people in other countries hate us. They don't all hate us, of course, but suddenly many Americans were shocked at the image of ourselves we saw reflected in infuriated eyes. Historically, America has enjoyed international goodwill, never more so than on Sept. 12, 2001. But that has slipped through our fingers.

A strake, by the way, is a metal strap that holds boats or planes together. Odd. But what makes me go nuclear is the use of "Divine" in the name. I've really had it with the Bush administration positioning things like they were ordered up by God.

And this isn't the first time. There are at least nine other divine tests on the books, including Divine Warhawk and, to really prove the point, Divine Hates.

Up close, each day, Americans are doing lovely, honorable things, but I wonder how we look as a group from far away. We ignore poor people and people stricken with unrelenting illness and pain, we turn our backs on genocide, and we spend our vast wealth and waste our sharp minds on war. Then we name the effort after deity. As if this experiment is ordained by God. The appalling arrogance, the blind blasphemy, the colossal chutzpah, in essentially naming this test after God!

Could this be why people hate us? We make bad choices. We choose to enrich the already wealthy, making everyone else poorer; we ignore the sick and starving; we invent wars but give them very real death tolls; we ruin the only land the world will ever get; we spend sinful amounts of money to create a better way to wage war; and, more and more, we literally do it in God's name.

The Bush administration acts like God prefers us to other countries. Like God isn't also God to Iceland and Bhutan and France and Rwanda. With President Bush in charge, we surely look like we think we're special. A little too special for some people.

We see people across the globe possessed by such a religious vehemence that their humanity is ruined. Crazed with bloodlust, they must destroy human life, American life, to prove God is on their side. Americans find this indefensible - that's not how reasonable people behave.

Then why is President Bush's team putting the language of the holy to our war efforts? To imply that God approves of our actions? I can only wonder what God might really think of America's "Divine" projects. Who would Jesus bomb? First and foremost, no one. If we fail to grasp that lesson, if we keep confusing the unholy with the sacred, our jihad looks a lot like theirs.

Barb Guy writes a regular column for the Salt Lake Tribune.
C 2006 Salt Lake Tribune

In last week's Salt Lake Tribune:
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3797038

'Divine Strake' delayed? Agency says, 'no'

In question: Critic says Justice Department lawyers told him the explosive test won't take place as early as planned

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

Divine Strake, the massive explosion experiment planned next month for the Nevada desert, may be delayed. Attorney Robert Hager said Justice Department lawyers for the Pentagon and the U.S. Energy Department told him Thursday the test would be delayed until as late as June 23, three weeks after the detonation was originally scheduled for.

A spokeswoman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, one of the agencies behind Divine Strake, denied the claim. "No," said Irene M. Smith. "Divine Strake's date has not been changed."

She noted that new information was released Friday with a revised environmental assessment from the National Nuclear Security Administration, the second agency involved.

But Hager pointed out the updated version still lacks critical details needed to determine whether the test could be safe, such as what type of test was used to check for radioactivity surrounding the explosion site and what the results were.

Hager and other critics have complained for weeks about the two agencies' failure to provide data showing the test will be as safe as they say.

Environmental officials in Utah and Nevada also have clamored for more detail on how much debris might be dispersed in the blast's 10,000-foot tall mushroom cloud and whether that debris could contain worrisome levels of radiation from past atomic tests.

"It's 'Take-our-word-on-it' that caused tens of thousands of cancers in Utah and Nevada and all over the United States," said Hager, whose clients include the Winnemucca Western Shoshone Indians and downwinders, a group of people who say fallout from atomic tests made them sick.

Hager's ultimate goal is to get Divine Strake scratched.

The federal government, meanwhile, describes the test as a means of understanding how 700 tons of explosives would affect a deep tunnel, like those believed to be used to shield leaders and military equipment in nations like Iran, North Korea and other potential U.S. enemies. While the detonation involves conventional material - its ammonium nitrate-fuel oil mix fueled the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - some critics fear Divine Strake is a precursor to the testing of nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert once again.

U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both Utah Republicans, and U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, have asked for better proof that Divine Strake won't hurt their state. All three sent aides to survey the site nearly two weeks ago and said they wanted more detailed information about it.

"We'll see if the government can produce the data and the documentation required to make the case that this test is necessary," said Steve Erickson, one of Hager's Utah clients. "This test is not a done deal yet"

Nevada Opposition Remains to Huge Test Detonation

by Keith Rogers
Las Vegas Review-Journal, NV
May 4, 2006

Nevada environmental officials continue to say they might not allow a massive non-nuclear explosion planned for June 2 at the Nevada Test Site because the federal government has failed to provide complete information about the possible fallout.

"A number of questions have been raised regarding radiological contamination" that could be injected into the atmosphere from the test, state Air Pollution Control Bureau Chief Michael Elges wrote in a letter Friday to Kathleen Carlson, manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Site Office. The NNSA is hosting the test, known as Divine Strake, for a Defense Department agency.

The letter seeks all radiological surveys of the tunnel complex area, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is preparing to detonate 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in a pit near the top of a ridge.

In addition, the state Air Pollution Control Bureau wants a detailed analysis of surface and below-ground contamination within a several mile radius of the blast site.

"As our technical evaluation process proceeds, more information may need to be provided," Elges' letter states. He noted that the bureau can't guarantee that a final decision on allowing the test to proceed will be made before June 2.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, or NDEP, which includes the bureau, sent a letter dated April 7 to the NNSA stating that it "is prohibited from allowing this test to proceed until authorization from NDEP (the division) has been received."

The information had been requested a year ago, but at the time of the April 7 letter the NNSA had not responded to the request. Since then, the NNSA has submitted a 35-page document containing charts of pollutants and plume maps. Documentation of hazardous air pollutants that could be carried in the explosion's dust-filled mushroom cloud is required under an air quality permit for operating the government's test site.

State environmental officials want to ensure that state or federal air quality regulations will not be violated, according to Dante Pistone, a division spokesman.

"We will require field monitors to ensure the accuracy of NNSA's claim that no radioactive materials will be resuspended into the atmosphere," he wrote in an e-mail. "In addition, the Desert Research Institute will be contracted to provide third-party monitoring at those locations."

In an e-mail Wednesday, NNSA spokesman Darwin Morgan said, "We have and are providing information to the state. As they have questions about the data and information we have provided them, we are responding to those queries.

"We are continuing to work cooperatively with the state on a daily basis to ensure that all available responsive information is provided and explained to them," Morgan said.

On a recent tour of the test site, NNSA officials distributed an aerial photograph of a five-mile radius from the Divine Strake pit that shows most hot spots for radioactive surface contamination are more than four miles away. There is, however, a muck pile on the surface 1.6 miles away left from six nuclear tests below ground between 1962 and 1971.

Government scientists have said the purpose of Divine Strake is to fine-tune their confidence in the ability of existing weapons to defeat deeply buried, hardened targets such as a limestone tunnel containing weapons of mass destruction.

They insisted the effort is not aimed at developing new nuclear bunker-buster bombs. Instead they intend to obtain data on how shock waves from conventional explosives travel through bedded limestone to assess the capabilities of existing weapons and for exploring more powerful conventional explosives.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., is not convinced of the scientists' claims about Divine Strake's purpose. On Wednesday she sought written assurance that the blast is not part of a program to develop new nuclear weapons.

In a letter to James Tegnelia, chief of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Berkley said she would not support the experiment until she receives a satisfactory response.

Berkley also expressed concern that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a branch of the Department of Defense, has not yet proved the blast will conform with the state's air quality guidelines.

"As I have stated publicly, I cannot support the Divine Strake test until federal agencies provide all information needed by the state to determine all potential environmental effects of the test," Berkley said in the letter.

An e-mail seeking comment from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was not immediately answered.

Berkley met with Tegnelia April 6 in her office. Although she said the meeting went well, she stopped short of endorsing the experiment.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, also has expressed reservations about the test, but other members of the Nevada congressional delegation have said they are convinced the detonation will not cause harm.

"There's nothing that's going to happen as far as dispersing anything bad in any place," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

Reid said he is convinced the test has nothing to do with reports that the United States might bomb Iran to stop that country's development of a nuclear weapon.

Tony Batt of the Stephens Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Find this article at: http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/May-04-Thu-2006/news/7195760 .html