History
Built by the Dresser-Ideco Company for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, it was first erected in 1962 in the atomic bomb test area at Yucca Flat, where it was used for an experiment intended to improve understanding the effects of radiation in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. A bare (unshielded) nuclear reactor on a hoist car could be moved to different heights on the tower; Japanese-type houses were built near the base of the tower and were bombarded with various intensities of radiation.
After the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banned open-air nuclear testing, the tower was dismantled and despite its immense size moved from its original location to Jackass Flats in Area 25 of the Nevada Test Site, where it was used for Operation HENRE (High Energy Neutron Reactions Experiment), a series of radiation measurement experiments using a small linear accelerator to provide neutrons.
Read more about this topic: BREN Tower
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“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)