LAS VEGAS, May 30 (UPI) -- A huge conventional-explosives test blast known as Divine Strake has been postponed indefinitely by U.S. officials.
The National Nuclear Security Administration announced Friday that next month's event at the Nevada Test Site would be put on hold so that further environmental studies could be carried out.
The scheduled June 2 detonation of some 700 tons of ammonia nitrate and fuel oil had no direct nuclear component; however questions were raised by opponents and members of Congress in the run-up to the test about the possibility that radioactive fallout in the soil left over from Cold War atomic could be stirred up, the Salt Lake Tribune said.
The explosive is basically a pit dug over an existing tunnel on the test site and filled with material brought in by a parade of tanker trucks and set off with 30 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives. The test is intended to measure the impact of huge blast on hardened sites buried deep below the surface in what the NNSA environmental impact statement called "a geological setting that simulates the characteristics of important potential global adversarial targets."
The agency said such devices had been detonated in the past at the White Sands, New Mexico, installation without any ill effects.
The sheer magnitude of blast, however, had anti-nuclear activists denouncing Divine Strake as a cover for development of a new generation of tactical nuclear "bunker buster" weapons.
