Anti-nuclear activists gather Tuesday morning for a blessing at the Atomic Testing Museum before heading out on their 65-mile trek to the Nevada Test Site. Photo by Samantha Clemens.
Peace walker Robin Ray walks past pedestrians on the Strip Tuesday during a march to the Nevada Test Site sponsored by the faith-based Nevada Desert Experience. Photo by Samantha Clemens.
With flags at the Atomic Testing Museum flying straight from a 25 mph wind, about two dozen anti-nuclear activists headed out at 9 a.m. Tuesday for their annual trek to the Nevada Test Site, where this weekend they intend to protest the government's nuclear weapons work.
They said they believe plans for possible development and production of the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead will result in resumption of full-scale nuclear weapons tests despite words to the contrary from officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Advertisement
NNSA officials have said the warhead's design by California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was chosen because it won't require full-scale tests below ground at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But John Amidon, of Albany, N.Y., an advocate for the faith-based Nevada Desert Experience, which is hosting the march and protest, said the Reliable Replacement Warhead isn't needed and probably would require testing.
U.S. warheads currently are "reliable. They're safe. They're good for 100 years," he said, noting that development of the Reliable Replacement Warhead would be a violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"My feeling is at some point they will attempt to test it," Amidon said.
The 17th annual walk to the test site began with a blessing inside the museum's lobby by Corbin Harney, the 87-year-old Western Shoshone spiritual leader. He rose from his wheelchair to address some 40 peace activists, many of whom held hands and formed a circle.
"We hope to get people to understand that we're dealing poison," he said after the send off. "The (U.S.) leaders are not telling the truth."
Chelsea Collonge, coordinator of the Nevada Desert Experience, said she traveled from Berkeley, Calif., to call attention to subcritical nuclear experiments that continue at the test site.
The national labs in Livermore, Calif., and Los Alamos, N.M., conduct the experiments using tiny amounts of plutonium in an effort to check the aging stockpile in the aftermath of full-scale nuclear weapons tests that were put on hold indefinitely in 1992. The experiments are designed to stop short of erupting into nuclear chain reactions.
"We hope to bring the message that the Nevada Test Site is land that needs our healing," said Collonge, 23.
Megan Rice, 77, said she wants "awareness to grow around our country about new plans to continue to develop, test and store nuclear weapons."
She said actor Martin Sheen, an anti-nuclear activist who has participated in past demonstrations at the test site, is expected to join the group there on Saturday.
Another Nevada Desert Experience and Western Shoshone supporter, Julia Moon Sparrow, of Las Vegas, said she hopes the peace march will help "in halting desecration of sacred land at the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain," where the Department of Energy wants to entomb deadly nuclear waste.
