Divine
Strake Desert Blast at NTS
2/22/07 DS "Test" Cancelled!
In 1/07, the proposed 700-ton explosion at the Nevada Test Site was back on the front burner of the U.S. Defense Dept. agenda on a very short timeline. On December 22nd, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) released a revised Environmental Assessment. Western Shoshone and Downwinder Utahns sued. Over 10,000 negative comments were submitted by February 7, the highest number of comments on any NTS program ever. NNSA said it would take 3-4 months just to review all the comments. On February 22nd, 2 weeks later, the test was cancelled completely.
2/7/07
HOME's Comments on
Divine Strake Environmental Assessment
2/7/07 Eileen McCabe's Comments on DS EA
2/7/07 Washington Post-
LEGACY OF RADIATION ILLNESS STIRS OBJECTION
Union of Concerned Scientists- Animation
For more information,
please go to: StopDivineStrake.com
RadioActivist.org
and GlobalSecurity.org
3/1/07: By
ROBERT C. KOEHLER, Tribune
Media Services:
Hold the Mushrooms
Cancellation of Divine Strake is a great victory, at a tragically high
cost
This unprecedented development must be savored. Divine Strake, the simulated nuclear blast the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was initially planning to set off nine months ago at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas — which would have raised a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud of god-knows-what — has been scrapped for good. After several postponements and a round of power-point presentations at various locations downwind of the test site that did nothing but fuel people’s outrage, it ain’t gonna happen.
“There was such a public outcry,” said Salt Lake City resident Mary Dickson of Downwinders, one of the organizations leading the fight against the blast, the possibility of which revived hellish memories of the era of above-ground testing that ended in 1962. “I like to think the people will prevail, so I can go on thinking this fighting we do does matter,” Dickson, a cancer survivor, told me. “I just want people to know, if they think they can’t make a difference, look at this case.”
“Back in the ’50s,” said Idahoan Preston Truman, who heads Downwinders, “we were given a booklet on the first day of kindergarten that said, ‘You people who live near the test site are, in a very real sense, active participants in this nation’s testing program.’ Well, I think it just got demonstrated!”
But banding together Alinsky-style to thwart the powers that be and stop a test blast isn’t what the era’s propaganda writers had in mind. That it was the last thing they had in mind is more than just bitter irony. It’s a raw example of the unfinished nature of American democracy, and the struggle ordinary citizens still have — well, let’s face it, it’s never-ending — to wrest control of their destiny from virulent special interests.
And there’s no special interest more virulent, or arrogant, than the weapons establishment: “I don’t want to sound glib here,” DTRA director James Tegnelia told reporters a year ago, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, “but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons.”
As of March 2006, a sham “environmental impact” study had been conducted and the big blast, composed of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, was seemingly a done deal, scheduled to be detonated in June within a mile of a radioactive hot spot at the test site. A total of 928 above- and below-ground nuclear tests had been conducted there between 1951 and 1992, and millions of people — the Downwinders — reaped the horrific consequences of the fallout they were told was perfectly benign.
The “active participation” assigned to them, it turns out, was to die quietly of cancer and not make a fuss.
Well, enough is enough. People saw clearly that the horror of the Cold War era was about to begin again, with Tegnelia’s lurid and clueless remark about a new mushroom cloud having a galvanizing effect on residents in four states — Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana — in the immediate vicinity of the site. Massive opposition, cutting across all political lines, formed immediately. The Downwinders had a clear, intractable message for the weapons industry: “You’re not going to make another generation of us!”
The stunning political diversity of the opposition speaks volumes. Conservative Republicans, such as Utah’s Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — who described himself as “jubilant” about Divine Strake’s cancellation — were in the front lines of the opposition, right next to antiwar progressives.
This conveys a crucial truth: A new, complex rationality is gaining political traction in American life. The logic of violence is deeply flawed and its paradoxes, which transcend ideology, are coming home to roost. The drive to create a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons (e.g., bunker busters), of which Divine Strake was a part, has the glaring flaw, which government propaganda can no longer mask, of poisoning U.S. citizens in its testing and production phases. Even “strong defense” patriots see the problem with this, at least when it affects them and their loved ones.
From here, the logic for a new kind of society, a new national purpose, gains momentum. Surely no Downwinder who fought Divine Strake merely wanted the test site moved elsewhere (“Bomb Indiana instead!”). The test was wrong, period. And a growing number of people are coming to grasp that actually using such weapons on an “enemy” population would be worse, by a factor of thousands or millions, than just testing it. And slowly we are withdrawing the government’s mandate to perpetuate a violent world.
But there’s such a long way to go, and the cost of enlightened self-interest is so high. When I asked Dickson what was next for her, she noted that a friend and fellow activist had just been diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer. “We take care of the people who are still dying,” she said. “It’s never over for us.”
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com.
700 ton blast
Supposed purpose: to simulate a nuclear blast in tunnels or bunkers.
However, weapons designers say privately that the true goal is to develop
a U.S. fusion bomb.
Nov 5, 2006, Andrew Kishner Stairway to Divine Strake http://www.opednews.com May 28, 2006 Carrie Dann arrested at Nevada Test Site Read More
May 26, 2006 Government Withdraws Plan for Divine Strake! Read more.
Western Shoshone Lawsuit to stop the test. http://www.wsdp.org
Western Shoshone Sacred Run Protests Divine Strake. Read more.
Correction: Runners carried sacred buffalo skull, not cow horns as stated.
Students Speak Out: We are ninth grade students at Emmett Junior High School (Idaho). We did a project that concerned the 1950s and 1960s Nevada bomb testings. The fallout from the bombings caused numerous deaths and health conditions that could have been prevented... We want to live in a place where we don’t have to worry about radioactive waste absorbing into our bodies and harming us for the rest of our lives!
'Divine Strake' detonation halted for now
June 05, 2006, by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today
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.