Free Republic

George Yoshitake, Don Luttrell, and four other officers stood directly underneath an exploding nuclear warhead 55 years ago -- and lived to tell their tale. The blast was just a test, a bit of Cold War marketing designed to make the concept of nuclear war less scary for the public, but the 2-kiloton atomic explosion set off over the Nevada nuclear test site (and over the heads of those six men) was very real. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/27/how-does-it-feel-to-stand-under-nuclear-bomb/?intcmp=features#ixzz227VcfW9E

March 29, 2004 Two reports say underground water at Test Site needs better monitoringBy Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com>LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON -- Two independent reports released today say radioactive contamination in water under the Nevada Test Site needs better monitoring, especially as the area population continues to grow, creating more competition for water resources. Nevada-based Citizen Alert, a community activist group, released a more than 100-page report completed in 2002 saying some of the department's monitoring wells drilled at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, are not located in places that could properly detect how radioactive pollution...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists conducted an underground nuclear materials experiment Friday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The subcritical experiment, dubbed Piano, involved detonating high explosives to chart the behavior of plutonium in a non-nuclear explosion. It did not trigger a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, NNSA spokesman Kevin Rohrer said. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California completed the test at 1:44 p.m. in a cavern 960 feet below ground, Rohrer said. No abnormalities and no surface damage were reported at the vast site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas....