John C. Hopkins

History of the Nevada Test Site

ABSTRACT

This presentation covers the history of the Nevada Test Site from the first discussions of on-continent testing in the late 1940s through the last test in 1992.  The first test in Nevada was fired on January 27,1951. Nine hundred and twenty-eight tests later the last shot, Divider, was fired on September 28, 1992. About ten percent of the shots were in the atmosphere during the golden age of nuclear weapons development in the 1950s. This period came to an end in 1958 with a test moratorium between the Soviet Union and the U.S.  The moratorium ended in 1961 when the Soviet Union embarked on a massive test program. The U.S  responded two weeks later with the Antler event.  After 1963 the Limited Test Ban Treaty was adopted prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere. On December 18, 1970 the test program experienced a massive prompt venting of the Livermore Baneberry event, which resulted in a six month shut-down and a complete review of test procedures. In 1974 the program was further constrained by the Threshold Test Ban Treaty to a maximum limit of 150 kilotons. The 1970s through the end of testing saw a steady increase in the complexity and sophistication of the test diagnostics. With Divider the era of nuclear weapon development testing came to a close.

About the speaker:

Hopkins began his career as a student at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received both his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Washington and returned to the Laboratory in 1960. He participated in the atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific and later at the Nevada Test Site. In 1974, Hopkins was appointed as the Nuclear Test Division leader and he was later appointed as the Laboratory’s associate director for the Nuclear Weapons Program. Throughout his career he was involved in nuclear policy and nuclear history and has authored books and papers in these fields. He served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, and the State and Defense departments; he has worked with the nuclear weapons programs of Britain, France, China and Russia.

The P/T colloquium website is: http://p25ext.lanl.gov/schedule.php?type=coll