On October 22, 1964, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense detonated a 5.3 kiloton ordnance nicknamed Salmon 826 meters deep inside the dome. Nearby residents were evacuated and compensated $10 per adult and $5 per child for their inconvenience. The Salmon explosion registered 6.0 on the Richter scale and was detected as far away as Sweden; its shock wave lifted the ground 25 centimeters and opened a cavity inside the salt dome. Two years later, a smaller nuclear device, Sterling, was detonated in that same space, and this time, the cavity created by the earlier explosion muffled the blast, demonstrating that nuclear powers might indeed try to hide the evidence by detonating atomic devices. inside similar underground caverns.
Hundreds of Mississippians in the vicinity reported damage from the blast, especially Salmon, to their homes and property. “Wells all over the world went bad,” Purvis resident Tom Beshears recalled in a interview 2014. Public concern has arisen over health issues possibly related to testing. In 2000, the US government commissioned a pipeline to carry clean water away from the site so people wouldn’t have to rely on water from local wells, and in 2015, the federal government paid $16.8 million in agreements to workers employed at the test site or who live nearby.
What does the future hold?
Since 1992, the nine nuclear countries they have largely abided by the testing moratorium. (North Korea remains the exception, having conducted six tests since 2006; India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998.) To date, 186 nations have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits any nuclear detonation. The United States has not yet ratified it; Russia did it in 2000.
The entire US nuclear arsenal is reviewed annually, primarily through “subcritical” testing (explosions that do not cause a nuclear chain reaction but test the weapon’s components) and computer simulations. The Stockpile Management Program “has done an incredibly good job,” says Robert Rosner, former chief scientist and director of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
However, the possibility that some part of the current testing program fails, or that a future US Administration resumes full testing for political or military reasons, causes anxiety in testing communities.
“When you talk regarding revitalizing the testing program, I want to know: Who’s going to accept that in their backyards?” says Tina Cordova, a waste activist, cancer survivor, and fifth-generation resident of Tularosa, New Mexico. ), regarding 65 kilometers from the Trinity test center. Several generations of her family have suffered from test-related cancers and health problems, she says.
“No test is free of risks and dangers, and someone is going to suffer the consequences,” he adds. “I only ask: are you willing to risk your future, and that of your family?”
