Nuclear Nevada

"Some of you have been inconvenienced by our test operations," the Atomic Energy Commission wrote to residents living near the Nevada Test Site, in Nye County, in 1955. "At times some of you have been exposed to potential risk from flash, blast, or fall-out. You have accepted the inconvenience or the risk without fuss, without alarm, and without panic."

Inconvenience? That's hardly how Nevadans would describe their nuclear legacy today, nor are they "without alarm" about its consequences. When Yucca Mountain was shelved earlier this year, many breathed a sigh of relief that Nye County wouldn't become a nuclear dumping ground—at least for now. But as the LA Times reports, the county is unlikely to shake its nuclear past anytime soon:

Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and in some cases directly into aquifers.

...

In a study for Nye County, where the nuclear test site lies, [Nevada hydrogeologist Thomas] Buqo estimated that the underground tests polluted 1.6 trillion gallons of water. That is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years—enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep.

At today's prices, that water would be worth as much as $48 billion if it had not been fouled, Buqo said.

The pollution is extreme—many degrees of magnitude worse than the contamination at the Hanford nuclear facility. Nye County is among the most economically stressed counties in Nevada, with an unemployment rate higher than Las Vegas’ Clark County. And water shortages are stifling economic development, according to local officials, who say they can’t approve new solar plants, for instance, without additional water supplies. They're beginning to pressure the feds to find new water sources or get serious about cleaning up the contamination.

"All the attention has been on Yucca Mountain," Nevada Rep. Dina Titus told the LA Times. "Now if the battle has been won on Yucca Mountain, then you may see some attention that will focus on cleaning up the test site."

Meanwhile, neighboring White Pine County is contemplating its own nuclear future. Ely, a struggling mining town, is considering developing a nuclear power plant to bring some 360 high-paying, permanent jobs to the area, which in Nevada is an especially complicated proposition, explains the Las Vegas Sun: "A nuclear power plant anywhere in Nevada, however, would not only fly in the face of the state’s lobbying against nuclear waste, it would also be a huge consumer of a resource over which epic fights are under way—water."