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After Rep. Karen Shepherd, D-Utah, demanded more
information about military tests that amounted to eight intentional
meltdowns of nuclear reactors in Utah in 1959, Dugway Proving Ground
provided her some
documents on
Thursday. But they appeared to be the same documents earlier obtained
by the Deseret News through a Freedom of Information Act request, upon
which it based stories this past Sunday about those tests.
"It's a good start, but I want to see more action on the part of the
Department of Defense," said Shepherd, who had demanded more
information after the story about the meltdowns appeared.
The story reported that the Air Force melted nuclear fuel in
high-temperature furnaces - which released 14 times more radiation
than the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island.
When last detected, the radiation clouds were headed toward the old
U.S. 40 (now I-80), and may have headed toward the communities of
Wendover and Knolls. Scientists are split about whether the tests
presented much danger to Utahns.
Shepherd has urged Defense Secretary William Perry to declassify and
release all documents about Cold War chemical, biological and
radiation tests at Dugway.
"I'm still waiting for an official response from Secretary Perry," she
said. "The pattern here seems to be that without warning, I receive
copies of the documents. This is no way to communicate with the people
of Utah."
After earlier Deseret News stories on how the Army used bombs and
other munitions to scatter radioactive particles to the winds near
Dugway, Shepherd had requested all documents about radiation testing
there.
She was given a stack of 17 documents, but they did not include
information about the meltdown experiments. |
