PHOTOS: Nevada’s nuclear legacy

The remains of the “ First National Bank of Frenchman Flat,” a freestanding Mosler bank vault, stand with its concrete-and-steel outer walls sheared back after a nuclear detonation on the dry lakebed at the Nevada Test Site.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A “typical American house” on the Nevada Test Site, one of two that survived the May 5, 1955, detonation of a 29-kiloton device named “Apple II” on Yucca Flat.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Low wooden bleachers grayed by the sun remain on a hill where people sat and watched atmospheric nuclear tests overlooking Frenchman Flat on the Nevada Test Site.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Between Jan. 27, 1951, and March 25, 1968, 14 atmospheric and five underground tests were detonated at Frenchman Flat. The 123-square-mile dry lake bed is one of three major desert valley basins that are closed at the Nevada Test Site.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Groundwater is pumped to a holding pond for use in dust mitigation at the Nevada Test Site. The environmental damage that occurred during four decades of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site left groundwater contamination and to some extent surface contamination at the massive site, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The nuclear weapon emplacement tower on Pahute Mesa, built for an underground nuclear test called Greenwater, which was canceled by the 1992 ban on nuclear testing.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Radioactive waste awaits burial in drums and containers at the Nevada Test Site, an hour’s drive north of Las Vegas.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)