Nevada Test Site, Nevada

The Nevada Test Site (NTS), now officially called the Nevada National Security Site, is a 1,350 square miles (860,000 acres) restricted area in southern Nevada, owned and operated by the Department of Energy. It is a multi-use, open-air laboratory that was the primary location of the nuclear weapons testing program for the United States and the United Kingdom. Other uses of the land at the NTS include hazardous waste storage, conventional explosives testing, plutonium dispersal tests, nuclear propulsion systems development, and research into remediation technologies.100 atmospheric tests have been conducted here, starting with the Able test, a 1 kiloton bomb dropped from a bomber above Frenchman Flat on January 27, 1951. The last intentional atmospheric shot was Little Feller I, on July 17, 1962. After this test, the Limited Test Ban Treaty took effect, prohibiting testing underwater, in the air or in outer space, thus forcing nuclear testing underground. And so began the modern era of testing at the NTS. 921 nuclear charges have been detonated beneath the landscape at the NTS. The underground testing program created the subsidence craters we see pock-marking Yucca flat. Many were performed within excavated cavities and tunnels in Rainier Mesa, and on the high ground at the north-west corner of the NTS, known as Pahute Mesa. Many other forms of "dirty" and land consumptive research and development has taken place at various locations all over the NTS, including nuclear rocket engine development programs, hazardous material spill tests, penetrator bomb tests, seismic tests, and many more. Small-scale underground nuclear tests still take place at the U1A facility, and explosives tests at the BEEF site. The site is used for security forces training and other military and federal projects, and has the proposed Yucca Mountain Waste Repository site on its western edge.