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1. Apple-2 house,
Doomsday Drive, Area 2
2. 'Motel' interior, Frenchman Flat, NAFR/Area 5
3. Sedan Crater, 124-kt Plowshare, Area 10
4. To Die For, painted shaft collar, Area 25
5. Mile-long suspension cables, Area 2
6. Turret sensor, Area 2
7. Road to Hell, Mercury Highway, Area 22
8. Railroad Bridge, Frenchman Lake, Area 5
9. Bomb shelter, with blast stress marks, Area 5
10. Vault remnants, First National Bank of Frenchman Flat, Area 5
11. Badge Office, Mercury, Area 23
12. Instrumentation bunker on Frenchman Flat , Nellis Air Force Range
13. Huron-King Vacuum Chamber- simulated satellite test chamber, Area
11
14. The Schoolhouse and other test structures, Nellis Air Force Range
15. Well 3 bore hole pipeyard, Area 1
16. White tank, Frenchman Flat, Area 5
17. Ground Zero at Frenchman Flat, Plumbbob series, NAFR
All
images are from an ongoing photography project, Ghost of the Atom,
presented as an edition of fifty 16x20 prints with atom bomb weapons
effects name borders
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One day in the winter of 1994, I happened to pass the entrance to a
place now called 'The Nevada Test Site' and run by the Department of Energy (DOE)
and the US Army. Then again, it could be run by the US Air Force as well, mostly for
the benefit of companies wanting to do research on atmoic weapons, high explosives,
and environmentally noxious projects. After all, what can one do to land which has
been blasted to bits by moe than one thousand nuclear explosions?
It has been the home of approximately 1,024 nuclear weapons tests or 'shots'.
Of these, about 125 were atmospheric, all coming before the Limited Test Ban
Treaty of 1963. Nine hundred others have taken place in tunnels, mine shafts,
or bore holes. 99% of all tests were "weapons-effects related", and despite public
relations efforts to the contrary, this has made the Test Site into a dead zone.
Curious as I am about places the public is forbidden to go, I applied for
and eventually received permission to photograph the NTS, including areas at
which A-bombs were exploded through the 1950's, into the 1960's, and up
to 1992, when President Bush halted testing and President Clinton has ended
all future tests of nuclear weapons by the United States.
The NTS contains 1,350 square miles (bigger than Rhode Island) and is almost
surrounded by the Nellis Air Force Range and other Federal wildlife and military
reservations. Together they form a test area the size of Massachusetts (8,200 sq.
miles) of which about half contains off-limits radioactive areas like Plutonium
Valley, the Fallout Hills, the Tonopah Test Range, Area 13, hundreds of
radioactive waste dumps containing refuse from atomic experiments, tests,
and accidents, air bases, bombing and gunnery ranges, as well as the super
secret research facility at Area 51.
Our military-minded atomic scientists have (mostly by duping the
American people as well as politicians) spent three trillion dollars making sure
our atomic warheads could "beat the Russians". They tested concrete buildings,
bank vaults, an underground garage, wooden Japanese houses, bridges,
American homes, cars, trucks, military hardware and other structures for their
reactions to an A-bomb exploding nearby. Also exposed were troops and
support personnel, many of whom have died as a result of being there. Due to
a lack of foresight more than a thousand square miles will be radioactive for
440 generations.
I was told, "Don't touch anything! If it needed to be moved, it already
would have been! Don't climb on things, don't kneel down, and don't pick up
anything! There is nothing on this Site which says, "Steal me!"" When the
temperature climbed into the high 90's I wanted to change into shorts, but I
was told my pants were better. We cannot forget that the Test Site has been
irradiated like no other place in America, and even though it has been 'rained
down' for nearly fifty years, going there is not a stroll in the park.
DOE, administrator of the NTS says, "We do not take visitors to areas
where they may be exposed to radiation. You and your camera equipment will
not require special clothing or shielding. Over the years, hundreds of
photojournalists, cameramen, and the public have visited the site and none
were required to wear protective clothing." All the areas we have thus far visited
at the NTS, show background radiation only.
Nonetheless, during our first 13 hours on the NTS, we saw three birds,
a jackrabbit, and a hungry coyote. I would liked to have seen more animals.
In fact, I would like to have heard something other than dead silence.
In the course of my photographic career I have been assigned to visit
many possibly dangerous locations. I have been in newly bored subway tunnels,
deep coal mines with foul air and water up to my waist, terrible slums, and in
places where I should have feared for my life had I not been so busy taking
pictures.
After visiting the Nevada Test Site, I learned that I could be afraid of
that which I could not even see
.
Jan W. Faul
May 20, 1998
PostScript: May 7, 2001
The NTS made it through the Y2K period without melting down. Today it sits
where it has for fifty-one years. Through the auspices of those trying tu cut corners
on the Test Ban Treaty, it has once again become a testing ground, this time for
so-called 'sub-critical' tests which may help produce a better nuclear weapon
without 'going critical' or sustaining a nuclear reaction.
The NTS has become a place nobody wants to publicly say is theirs. While DOE has
claimed to manage it in the past, now they are "out-sourcing" many administrative tasks
to reduce staffing.Two years ago, they administratively traded land with the Air Force,
so that now the USAF finally owns Area 51. For their part, DOE says it will now tell the
truth about what they are doing at the NTS. I guess they were the only people around
who didn't know that nobody believed anything they printed or said.
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