The Reno attorney representing downwinders in a case to thwart the massive, non-nuclear Divine Strake blast planned for the Nevada Test Site claims the government agencies behind the experiment are admitting for the first time that radioactive particles in the test site's soils will be transported by the blast's mushroom cloud.

Citing experts on the issue, attorney Robert Hager said the science used to estimate potential exposures "is flawed (and) the modeling of where the radioactivity will be deposited is mere speculation."

"The history of prior blasts reflects that it is not possible to predict where or in what concentrations the deadly alpha emitters will be deposited, but that wherever they end up, the population will suffer increased incident of cancer, disproportionately borne by children," he said in a prepared statement this week after reviewing the draft environmental assessment for the bunker-busting Divine Strake experiment.

A public meeting on the experiment by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Cashman Center. Two meetings will follow, on Wednesday in Salt Lake City and Thursday in St. George, Utah.

A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the host agency for the blast, said he couldn't comment Thursday on Hager's statement. "We've always acknowledged that background radiation exists at the Nevada Test Site, including the Divine Strake location," said the spokesman, Kevin Rohrer.

He said the draft environmental assessment presents additional modeling details of how any airborne particles might be transported from the blast. The modeling technique has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is the same one used by the state of Nevada for the test site's air permit.

The calculated dose at the test site's boundary is "a very, very, very low amount," Rohrer said, an amount so low it would be difficult to detect using sensitive radiation detection equipment.

One of Hager's experts, Richard L. Miller, an industrial hygienist who has authored six books on nuclear testing, said the modeling procedure wouldn't apply to a single event such as Divine Strake because it isn't a continuous emission. "If you have a one-time event, there is no way on earth you will be able to tell where it is going to go," Miller said Friday by telephone from The Woodlands, Texas.

"This material is going to be thrust into the atmosphere and travel east. ... It's going to be thrust 10,000 feet and then travel somewhere," he added.

Hager, who represents some members of the Winnemucca Indian Colony and some downwinders in Nye County and Utah, said Friday that he doubted government scientists could use wind speed and direction at ground level "and have any confidence that's what's happening in the atmosphere" when particles from the blast come flying off at 13,000 feet per second.

"What we're talking about is the ingesting and inhaling of alpha emitters. If you inhale one particle, you'll get cancer," Hager said, referring to plutonium, americium and a "host of radionuclides that they now admit are present in the soil."

The Divine Strake experiment is designed to explore futuristic conventional bombs and fine-tune the capabilities of existing nuclear weapons for destroying deep tunnels where an enemy might store weapons of mass destruction, defense planners have said.

Originally planned for June last year, the experiment has been stalled by the lawsuit and objections by some members of Nevada's and Utah's delegation and Citizen Alert, a Nevada environmental group.

In the meantime, the 36-foot-deep pit that was dug last year near the top of Syncline Ridge, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to hold 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil as well as the limestone tunnel that the blast was intended to crush, was mothballed.

But in November, officials for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said plans for the $23 million blast were back on track for the Nevada Test Site after weighing alternative sites in New Mexico, Utah, California and Indiana.