Project Faultless !

After over a decade of pounding St. George and Cedar City with fallout, totally killing entire herds of sheep, causing cancer and Leukemia cases through out western Utah and Nevada, the two biggest leaders in the world finally came to an agreement. 1963 the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed. Leading the way, President John F. Kennedy and Russia’s President Kruschev, agreed to move all nuclear tests underground.

The first atomic bombs were tested in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1948. Having test grounds so far away proved to be a hardship on our New Mexico weapon designers. In 1951 a new and closer testing ground was located 90 miles north of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site (NTS). They made over one hundred above ground atmospheric tests, before the new Test Ban Treaty was signed. The remaining 828 nuclear tests were conducted underground and in tunnels. This was to cause a great concern. The larger the test, the more complaints from Las Vegas residents and casino operators. To keep the damage down from shattering windows and such, they would be limited to the size test they could detonate.[i]

In the summer of 1966, the Pentagon began to call for underground tests of much larger yield than the Nevada Test Site could handle. Their other site at Pahute Mesa was also thought to be inadequate for larger shots. Scientist then began a search for areas that would meet the requirements for such tests. They would need solid rock underneath, little to no water, a remoteness from habitation or other “works of man”, which would be rattled from ground shock. This all led them to find, Amchitka, Alaska, and Central Nevada.[ii]

Amchitka was looked at after World War II but was considered too windswept for the purpose. Being a treeless, tundra-covered island with only otters, bald eagles, and other wildlife as inhabitants. Still they made one underground test in 1965, an 80-kiloton shot called “Longshot”.[iii]

The plans for seeking a site in Central Nevada were announced in October of 1966. The selection of Hot Creek valley, after an intensive search of six valleys in the Central area was announced on May 10, 1967. Therefore, to find out which one fit the bill, the AEC planned “calibration tests” at Hot Creek early in 1968 and Amchitka in 1969.[iv]

The Central Nevada Test Area ( CNTA) was located between the Hot Range and the Pancake Range and consisted sage-covered arid ground. The area was sparsely populated with ranching and mining be the major interests. The nearest towns were Tonopah 85 miles southwest and Currant 75 miles to the northeast.[v]

As early as November 24, 1967 the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and Goldfield News published an article calling for drilling bids at Hot Creek.

They stated that a pre-bid conference would be held at the J&C office building in Las Vegas at 9:00 pm Tuesday the Nov. 28^th. The article gave the specifications of the hole to be drilled as such;

The hole is to be drilled to 4,650 feet. The first stage calls for a 136-inch diameter hole to 250 feet, with 122-inch inside diameter casing. The second stage calls for a 120-inch diameter hole, lined with 94-inch inside diameter steel-lined fiberglass casing to a depth of 2,400 feet. From 2,400 to 4,650feet the hole is to be drilled at 90-inches and lined with 54-inch inside diameter casing, which will have an 86-inch outside diameter sphere at the lower end.[vi]

Located at a place midway down the valley the first hole labeled UC-1 by the AEC and was to be Project Faultless. This would be the first of three calibration tests. Three miles north was a hole labeled UC-4, and another hole UC-3 to the south. The emplacement hole UC-1 was drilled through 2,400 feet of alluvium fallowed by tuffaceous sediments and zeolitized tuffs down to 3,274 feet. The Faultless test was to produce a yield between 200 and 1,000 kilotons and would be placed at 3,200 feet.

A second test was already in the making if all went well with Faultless. It was named Adagio and was estimated to be in the Multi-megaton range, some where between three or four perhaps.[vii]

On Saturday, January 13^th, The Eureka Sentinel posted;

Nuclear Blast Slated Jan. 19

The Atomic Energy Commission has scheduled an underground

Nuclear test in the upper Hot Creek valley of Central Nevada at

10:00 am (PST) on Friday, Jan 19, local residents were informed

this week.[viii]

The AEC was taking no chances with this one. They closed U.S. Highway 6 from Tonopah to Ely from 8:00 am until 10:30 am and evacuated everyone within 12 miles of the blast. The viewing point for the selected few was to be the Base Camp 23 miles south of the blast, right off Highway 6. The Base Camp was built for Project Faultless and was to be used for the rest of the tests as well.[ix]

The man who has the final say so on weather the first nuclear test in Central Nevada go’s off as scheduled is 54 year old William Allaire. Allaire was the project engineer in charge of construction of the facilities for the world’s first Atomic Test at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945. He joined the U.S. Army Corp in 1935, at the age of 24, and during World War II was connected to the Albuquerque engineering district, which was in charge of the first A-bomb detonation. Later in 1949, he joined the AEC at Los Alamos where he worked until he transferred to Las Vegas in 1961. He has also played a key role in two other projects away from central Nevada. Allaire was in charge of the seismic research program for Project Shoal near Fallon, Nevada, in 1963 as well as Project Salmon near Hattiesburg. Mississippi, in 1964.[x]

Approximately 300 people worked on the “Faultless” Project, including 230 contractor employees and camp maintenance personnel. There were also some 70 Lawrence radiation laboratory, Atomic Energy, and government agency personnel as well. The camp population runs around 200 with the transient personnel staying in Tonopah.[xi]

The Base camp was to be the viewing point, but not within line of sight. On the morning of the blast, standing out on the black top was a small but impressive crowd. Those in attendance were Ira Jacobson, Leo Funk, inspector John Duarte of the state highway patrol, James Morrow, Russell Wood, William Kretsehmer and Vic Barndt. The Atomic Energy officers were Henry Vermillion and Dixon Stewart. The detonation was delayed by 15 minutes, due to minor technical problem, by otherwise went off with out a hitch. Seconds after the blast, the crowd felt a rolling sensation of the earth, something like what you would feel on board a ship.[xii]

The explosion ripped a trench 3,000 to 4,000 feet long, 15 to 100 feet wide, and 3 to 23 feet deep. The area around the test hole drops some 12 to 14 feet, entrenching some 14 acres.[xiii] The nuclear device had the punch of 1 million tons of TNT, considered large compared to the 20,000 tons equivalent drop on Hiroshima. [xiv]Fifty miles away in Currant, Nevada, Mrs. Melba Manzonie described the shock wave as lasting about a minute. As she sits waiting for it, the pictures on the wall swayed outward, as if blown by some great wind. She reported how the entire house vibrated.[xv]

Some 90 miles away in Ely, Nevada, 32 seconds after the blast, windows rattled, hanging light fixtures, power poles and tall signs as well as large building swayed briefly as Ely enter the Atomic age. The high school reported cracked windows, as this was the closest detonation in history to Ely.[xvi]

A month later while hosting an “under-ground nuclear explosion” program in Tonopah, Henry Vermillion reported that everything looked favorable but no decision had been made yet. Matter of fact every report giving after the test said, favorable but no decision made yet.[xvii] This turned out to be a very messy shot, it vented out into the atmosphere, ripped the earth apart, and cause a cavity estimated at 328 feet in diameter and is in direct contact with groundwater.[xviii]

The CNTA consist of three parcels of land removed from public domain. UC-1 is a 640-acre parcel that encompasses the Faultless test site at ground zero. UC-3 and UC-4 are parcels where shafts were drilled for test sites to fallow Project Faultless and encompasses approximately 1,920 acres. The total area of the CNTA covers 2,560 acres. Shortly after the Faultless test was conducted the AEC canceled all farther shot in the CNTA for programmatic reasons, this included UC-3 and UC-4 while they were still in their implementation stages.[xix]

Reported in the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and Goldfield News, Friday March 8^th, 1968, “Hot Creek Camp Closing Ordered”. The Base Camp established by the Atomic Energy Commission for the Faultless underground nuclear calibration experiment in Hot Creek is being demobilized. The government and laboratory personnel assigned to Central Nevada will live in Tonopah. The base camp was constructed and maintained by McKenzie Construction Inc. of Sparks Nevada. Under a 26-week, $1,865,525.85 sub-contract from Holmes & Narver Inc. in Las Vegas. The architect-engineer-management contractor for the Nevada operations office’s supplemental test site activities.[xx]

The DOE/NSO considers the CNTA surface clean up as complete. The subsurface intrusion restrictions are in place and will be into the near future. They have placed a concrete slab over the original shaft, and all of the boreholes have been sealed.[xxi]

The only problem left is the subsurface ground water. My question is, how many years is it going to take before it reaches Ely, or Tonopah. The EPA under the long-term Hydrologic Monitoring Program monitors the groundwater quality in the CNTA annually. The DOE assumes the monitoring will be performed for the next 100 years. However, post closure monitoring will be conducted as agreed upon in the site closure report for the subsurface.[xxii]

Now I was there on April 18^th, 2005, and what I saw looked a little bit more than just monitoring. The site is closed, and they are drilling to test subsurface water, to the north of the UC-1 hole. However, they also have earthmovers and trailers set up that look as if they plan to stay a while. Could it be after thirty years they finally decided to really clean the site? A man just told me while I was in the area, that he uses to work on a drilling rig. When they would have an oil spill, the government gave then ten days to clean up the mess. Why is it the government takes thirty years to clean up theirs?