NTS Today
The test site offers monthly public tours, often fully booked months in advance. Visitors are not allowed to bring in cameras, binoculars, cell phones, or pick up rocks for souvenirs.
While there are no longer any explosive tests of nuclear weapons at the site, there is still subcritical testing, used to determine the viability of the United States' aging nuclear arsenal. Additionally, the site is the location of the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Complex, which sorts and stores low-level radioactive waste that is not transuranic and has a half life not longer than 20 years. Bechtel Nevada Corporation (a joint venture of Lockheed Martin, Bechtel and Johnson Controls) ran this complex until 2006. Several other companies won the latest bid for the contract. They then combined to form a new company called National Security Technologies, LLC (a joint venture of Northrop Grumman, AECOM, CH2M Hill and Nuclear Fuel Services). AECOM, known earlier as Holmes and Narver, held the Nevada Test Site contract for many years before Bechtel Nevada Corp. had it.
The Radiological/Nuclear WMD Incident Exercise Site (T-1), which replicates multiple terrorist radiological incidents with train, plane, automobile, truck, and helicopter props is located in Area 1, at the former site of tests EASY, SIMON, APPLE-2, and GALILEO.
Read more about this topic: Nevada National Security Site
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)