Editorial published Sep 13, 2006 in The Spectrum

The staunch opposition that won out over Private Fuel Storage's plight to store high-level nuclear waste in Utah's west desert needs to be as ardent against any future nuclear-type testing at the Nevada Test Site.

Getting caught up in triumph, while well-deserved and worthy of praise, does not mean other battles are abandoned. Putting a stop to the detonation of conventional and nuclear bombs created to destroy deep tunnels where weapons of mass destruction are assumed to be buried is a cause that must maintain continuum.

Divine Strake, the 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb originally planned for a 35-foot open-air pit dug into a limestone ridge at the Nevada Test Site, is by far extinguished. Though a lawsuit, public outcry with petitions and Nevada and Utah Congressional delegations objected emphatically, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is pursuing setting the low-yield blast off in mid to late 2007.

Where it will happen does not rule out our arid neighbor approximately 85 miles from Las Vegas because it already possesses monitoring and diagnostic equipment needed to study the explosion. It will be a costly expenditure to duplicate that somewhere else.

Irene Smith, a spokesman from the DTRA, mentioned an alternative location in Mitchell, Ind., where a limestone quarry was home to smaller tests involving 3,000-pound batches of explosives in 2004 and 2005. According to DTRA, that is not going to happen and never intended for it to occur in Indiana.

What is going to happen? That is the looming question that remains unanswered by the Department of Defense. Since it is clearly avoided, vigilance in getting a response is essential to find out where in the process the $23 million test is now.

Utah has won one battle that will keep the Goshute Tribal lands free of radioactive waste storage, but it simply cannot rest on its laurels in its fight to win over an explosion that has yet to prove it will not pose health risks to the local population from toxic materials released and dispersed by a predicted 10,000-foot mushroom cloud.

While discovering ways to root out enemies and weapons hidden in limestone tunnels is understandable, it should not be done by experimentation at the expense of innocent American civilians. Southern Utah has been down that road before and refuses to tread that path again. When the constant threat of nuclear weapons testing is more than temporarily postponed, it will definitely be a victory worth celebrating.