Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [236]
49. “suddenly it ran out of LH2”: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 129.
50. cleanup crews in full protective gear could not enter the area for six weeks: “Decontamination of Test Cell ‘C’ at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station After a Reactor Accident,” January 18, 1967, LA-3633; Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 129–31.
51. long metal tongs: The workers dropped the radioactive chunks into one-gallon paint cans, which were driven out of Area 25 on a lead dolly.
52. officially ended on January 5, 1973: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 203.
53. no such final test: Interview with Darwin Morgan.
54. records are “well organized and complete”: Ibid., 323.
55. “Due to the destruction of two nuclear reactors”: Rollins, “Nevada Test Site—Site Description,” 25 of 99.
56. Milton Klein might know: Interview with Harold Finger; interview with Milton Klein. Klein also says he “takes issue with the use of the word meltdown because that’s not exactly what happens to a reactor when it’s deprived of coolant.”
57. radioactive elements were still present: Table 3-2, “Corrective Investigation Plan For Corrective Action Unit 165: Areas 25 and 26 Dry Well and Washdown Areas, Nevada Test Site, Nevada,” 32.
312 “may have percolated into underlying soil.” Ibid. Certainly, Barnes’s eyewitness testimony suggests as much. “When we would run the reactor, we had to clear out forty miles of the canyon around Calico Hills, it would emit that much radiation,” Barnes explained. “And every time we ran the reactor, giant dewars of water would flood the whole area, which would help cool everything down. Enough water to make a temporary pond of water several feet deep.”
58. Area 25 began serving a new purpose: Interview with T. D. Barnes.
59. “It’s a PhD experience for first responders”: Film shown on a loop at the Atomic Energy Museum in Las Vegas. Also in this section of the museum was a photograph of Area 25, which depicted desert terrain interrupted by a bright blue sign on a post that read: “EG&G Training 295-6820”—an indication that the federal partner in WMD training at Area 25 was EG&G. Morgan denies this partnership existed and insists EG&G stopped working as an “official contractor” at the test site in the 1990s. The photograph at the Atomic Testing Museum has since been taken down, but as of December 30, 2010, the telephone number remained in service (using the local area code) with a voice mail stating: “You have reached [name redacted] in the training department. Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible.”
60. one day a nuclear facility could very well melt down: For an understanding of nuclear reactor physics, how a power reactor differs from a nuclear rocket reactor, and how both differ from a nuclear bomb, see Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, xvii.
61. five “boom year(s)”: Rogovin, Three Mile Island Report, 182–83.
62. nuclear reactor “units”: Ibid., 182.
63. dispatched an EG&G remote sensing aircraft: EG&G, Inc., Las Vegas Operations, “An Aerial Radiological Survey of the Three Mile Island Station Nuclear Power Plant,” U.S. Department of Energy, 1977. The cover page of the president’s commission on the accident at Three Mile Island features a thermal photo accredited to EG&G.
64. “may be the best insurance that it will not reoccur”: Rogovin, Three Mile Island Report, 5.
65. nuclear-powered Russian spy satellite crashed: Gates, Mahlon, Operation Morning Light, Northwest Territories, Canada 1978, A Non-Technical Summary of U.S. Participation; “The Soviet Space Nuclear Power Program,” Directorate of Intelligence, CIA.
66. a decision was made not to inform the public: Weiss, “The Life and Death of Cosmos 954.” Marked Secret, Not to be Released to Foreign Nationals, 7 pages, no date. Declassified 10/24/97.
67. “playing night