Nevada "mushroom cloud" blast plan abandoned

Nevada "mushroom cloud" blast plan abandoned

Source Link: news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has abandoned plans for a massive test explosion in the Nevada desert, the first time a mushroom cloud would have been seen near Las Vegas since a nuclear test in the 1960s, officials said on Thursday.

The detonation of conventional explosives had been designed to test the effectiveness of weapons against deep underground targets but critics had expressed concern that dust containing background radiation could be spread into the air.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Ohh, yeah, that nasty background radiation . . . the fallout from a conventional blast would be sooo much worse than the stuff from thermonuclear weapons testing!


They used the threat of Soviet Russia as justification 40 years ago. What is the new excuse?

The article states that their intent is to test it against underground targets.

My guess is that administration's motivation might be that Iran has underground facilities for their nuclear operations, and this might be a possible way to destroy them effectively.

[edit on 23-2-2007 by DJMessiah]