Yucca Flat

Yucca Flat occupies most of the central east portion of the Nevada Test Site[1]
Yucca Flat has hundreds of subsidence craters from underground nuclear weapons tests. Asian Lake is visible on the right.

Yucca Flat is a closed desert drainage basin, one of four major nuclear test regions within the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and is divided into nine test sections: Areas 1 through 4 and 6 through 10. Yucca Flat is located at the eastern edge of NTS, about ten miles (16 km) north of Frenchman Flat, and 65 miles (105 km) from Las Vegas, Nevada.[2] Yucca Flat was the site for 739 nuclear tests – nearly four of every five tests carried out at the NTS.[3]

Yucca Flat has been called "the most irradiated, nuclear-blasted spot on the face of the earth".[2] In March 2009, TIME identified the 1970 Yucca Flat Baneberry Test, where 86 workers were exposed to radiation, as one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.[4]

  1. ^ United States Geological Survey. Nevada Test Site. Geologic Surface Effects of Underground Nuclear Testing. Accessed on April 18, 2009.
  2. ^ a b Gerald H. Clarfield and William M. Wiecek (1984). Nuclear America: Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States 1940–1980, Harper & Row, New York, p. 202.
  3. ^ "US Department of Energy. Nevada Operations Office. United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992 (December 2000)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-08-05. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
  4. ^ The Worst Nuclear Disasters