Nevada A-Blast Marks 4th U.S. Test This Year
Scientists triggered a nuclear weapon beneath the Nevada desert Saturday, less than 24 hours after the Soviet Union announced a nuclear detonation at its Central Asian test site.
The Easter weekend tests were the fourth nuclear detonations of 1987 for each country.
Chris West of the U.S. Department of Energy said Saturday’s weapon experiment, code-named Delama, was conducted at 6:40 a.m., 1,800 feet beneath Pahute Mesa, a remote, 7,000-foot-high plateau on the Nevada Test Site, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The test had a yield of 20 to 150 kilotons, the largest of four weapons tests announced this year by the United States. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a 13-kiloton weapon.
“No radiation escaped into the atmosphere,” West said. “The test was a success.”
The Soviet news agency Tass said on Friday that the fourth Soviet test of 1987 had been conducted in Central Asia.
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