Plans for the massive non-nuclear Divine Strake blast at the Nevada Test Site are dead but legal issues surrounding the controversial bunker-buster experiment were resurrected Friday.
Eight days after a Pentagon agency canceled its plans for the Divine Strake detonation, Senior U.S. District Judge Lloyd George scheduled a status report for April 30.
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George anticipates that motions will be filed by U.S. attorneys who want to dismiss a case by downwinders and some members of the Winnemucca Indian Colony challenging the test.
Opponents fear that the government will conduct smaller blasts that, while not as large as Divine Strake, could still stir up potentially deadly radioactive dust that lies on the ground of the test site and could be blown to their homes.
The opponents' lawyer, Robert Hager, of Reno, wants to keep the case alive by forcing the government to formally define the smaller scale "confirmatory" experiments that a Pentagon agency has said it intends to conduct in lieu of Divine Strake's cancellation.
In his words, George decided to "keep it on the calendar so we can finally conclude this matter with satisfaction to everyone."
"You file whatever motions you choose to file," he told Hager and Justice Department attorney Caroline Blanco, who presented their respective positions in a conference call at the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse, named after the judge.
Referring to a Feb. 22 press release from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency canceling the test amid widespread opposition from downwinders and some politicians in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, Hager said he doesn't understand what agency director James Tegnelia meant by "confirmatory experiments at a much smaller scale" will instead be conducted.
"I don't know what that means. ... To what extent smaller?" Hager asked during the conference call.
Tegnelia apologized last year for saying the blast from Divine Strake's 700-ton slurry of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil would send a "mushroom cloud over Las Vegas."
Hager and his clients and thousands who commented on the agency's plans fear that radioactive remnants from historic nuclear weapons tests at the test site would be lofted into the atmosphere and carried off the site with fine dust particles from the above-ground explosion.
