It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by StarChild
X-Ray Laser Testing? How would that coincide with the structures seen here?
Originally posted by Shadowhawk
Mystery solved. The area with the three-sided pyramid is Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Big Explosives Experimental Facility (BEEF) in Area 4 of the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site.
The BEEF is a hydrodynamic testing facility, located about 95 miles northwest of Las Vegas and about 12 miles east of the Test Site's central Control Point. The need for the BEEF site originated when, due to community encroachment near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) facility in Livermore, California, DOE was no longer allowed to perform large high explosive experiments at the facility's Site 300, Shaped Charge Scaling Project.
Therefore looking at the NTS as a location to continue to perform these large high explosive experiments, two earth-covered, two-foot thick steel reinforced concrete bunkers, built to monitor atmospheric tests at Yucca Flat in the 1950s, were located and found to be ideally configured. The facility consists of a control bunker, a camera bunker, a gravel firing table, and associated control and diagnostic systems.
The facility has conducted conventional high-explosives experiments using a testbed that provides sophisticated diagnostics such as high-speed optics and x-ray radiography on the firing table, while operating personnel are present in the bunker. The WATUSI experiment at the BEEF in September 2002 sought to show that existing seismic and infrasound sensors at the Test Site and across the western U.S. that were used in the days of underground nuclear testing still can detect and characterize explosions accurately. The yield of the experiment was equivalent to approximately 37,000 pounds of TNT (37 kilotons).
For some nice ground-level images of the BEEF, see the following links:
www.shundahai.org/area_4_nts.htm
www.nv.doe.gov/nationalsecurity/stewardship/beef.htm
www.nv.doe.gov/library/FactSheets/DOENV_711.pdf
www.nv.doe.gov/library/photos/beef.aspx