The Nevada Test History Center
Tuesday, December 19, 2000

50 YEARS IN THE MAKING

It has been 50 years since President Truman on Dec. 18, 1950, signed the test site into existence. During a ceremony at the Desert Research Institute, officials used the anniversary to dedicate a $10 million expansion of the institute's science center. It will eventually hold hundreds of thousands of documents and artifacts from the test site.

FUTURE POINTS TO AEROSPACE

Companies plan to use the test site to launch and land reusable space vehicles. Aerospace will be very important in the future, Kistler Aerospace Corp., based in Kirkland, Wash, has committed to use the test site to launch and land reusable space vehicles, and Lockheed Martin, based in Palmdale, Calif. may build a port to launch its VentureStar space plane, a shuttle-like system for delivering payloads.

EXPERIMENTS TO CONTINUE

For ab lest the next decade, the burden of certifying the stockpile as safe and reliable will hinge on physics tools like huge lasers and machines, such as the Atlas pulsed-power machine, which fires bursts of electrons at metals to simulate conditions of a nuclear explosion. The centerpiece of the test site's effort will continue to be subcritical experiments--small-scale detonations of tiny amounts of plutonium that stop short of erupting into a sustained, nuclear chain reaction.

NTS DEVELOPMENT CORP. ESTABLISHED

To keep the test site viable, a corporation was formed, NTS Development Corp., a nonprofit, public-private venture established by Congress to find companies and institutions to use the test site. The Corporation's President and Chief Executive Officer, said he hopes the test site's aerospace endeavors will help the United States regain some of the billions of dollars being lost to foreign competitors that launch space payloads.

SCIENCE CENTER WILL HOUSE THE NEVADA ATOMIC TESTING HISTORY INSTITUTE IN 2002

Complementing Space Age activities will be a large wind turbine facility to be built by a consortium of companies. Later, plans call for a solar-power facility to turn the sun's energy into electricity, and a gas- powered turbine plant to assure consistent power production from the test site.

When it opens in 2002, the 60,000-square-foot science center will house the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute, government radiation records, Desert Research Institute's Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management and a collection of 500,000 artifacts from the test site.

SMITHSONIAN AFFILIATION

The Nuclear History Museum, spearheaded by the non-profit Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, has gained affiliation with Washington's Smithsonian Institution, an arrangement that fosters the sharing of historical objects from the Cold War.

KEEPING THE UNITED STATES SECURE

John Gordon, chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stressed the importance of the test site's future in keeping the United States secure. "We have to understand chemistry and physics at a level of detail not thought possible", he said. "We celebrate the last 50 years and we look forward to the next 50 years."

NATIONAL SECURITY IS THE BENEFIT

While hundreds of cavities left by underground nuclear tests are contaminated to the point that monitoring will go on forever, the benefit has been national security.

learn more: Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation