The Nevada Test Site (NTS), located in Southern Nevada, sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, is a vast outdoor testing ground administered by the Department of Energy. At NTS many workers were exposed to hazards such as silica dust, diesel exhaust, beryllium, noise, and radiation. The NTS Medical Surveillance Program offers free medical screening to former NTS workers to look for work-related health problems.
Underground and Atmospheric Testing
The Nevada Test Site was the primary location for testing of nuclear weapons in the continental U.S from 1951 until the present nuclear testing moratorium began in September 1992. A total of 928 tests were conducted at NTS, including 100 atmospheric tests between 1951 and 1958. After 1961, almost all tests took place in shafts, drillholes and underground tunnels that were mined, drilled, and constructed for this purpose.
Workers in the construction trades such as miners and laborers, operating engineers, electrical workers, carpenters, pipefitters, ironworkers, and sheetmetal workers mined tunnels, drilled vertical holes, prepared and maintained testing areas and re-entered tunnels to retrieve equipment following nuclear blasts.
...........................................................................................................more...
Security guards secured tunnels and other testing areas and teamsters transported equipment in and out of testing areas preceding and following nuclear blasts. At the peak of underground testing in the mid-1980's, as many as 15,000 workers were employed at NTS. Workers involved in underground and atmospheric testing may have been exposed to beryllium, silica dust, diesel exhaust, and a variety of other hazardous substances at the NTS.
Nuclear Rocket Development Station
In the mid 1950’s the United States initiated a nuclear rocket program called Project Rover to explore the capability of atomic energy to propel a rocket into space. Project Rover was located in the southwest corner of the NTS known as area 25. Later re-named Nuclear Rocket Development Station (NRDS), the program was jointly administered by the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA’s Space Nuclear Propulsion Office. The complex at NRDS (i.e. NRDS, EMAD, RMAD, 400, 401, 410) contained three test cells, administrative and control offices and radioactive material storage. Approximately 1,800 people worked at NRDS from the late 1950’s through the mid—1970’s in the construction, testing and disassembly of nuclear reactors and engines.
...........................................................................................................more...
North Las Vegas/ Losee Road
In 1974, the "Atlas" facility in North Las Vegas was erected. EG+G was the contractor that administered the buildings that comprised the Atlas facility in North Las Vegas and the work that was done there. Approximately 400 people worked at the facility over a 20-year period. Work with beryllium and its alloys took place in the "B" building located on Losee Road. Custodians, laborers, and janitors who worked in this building were likely to have been exposed to beryllium dust/fumes, as cleaning, sweeping, and similar activity could have stirred up beryllium dust. Loud noise was also a concern for workers in the Atlas facility.
..............................................................................................(back to top)
|