The Nevada Test Site, home to nuclear weapons testing
for more than 40 years, may have a brighter future. Clear skies and
high insolation – the amount of solar radiation available at ground
level – make the test site one of the best places in North America
for capturing solar energy, according to a feasibility study by the
Energy Department. The study concluded that solar collectors
covering less than 7 percent of the 1,350-square-mile test site
could produce up to 10,000 megawatts of electricity, as much as 10
large coal or nuclear plants. The Energy Department has named a
task force of government and solar industry representatives to
develop plans for a “solar enterprise zone” at the former atomic
proving ground. No nuclear weapons have been exploded there since
the fall of 1992, when Congress passed a moratorium on testing.
This spring, President Clinton extended the moratorium until
September 1995. The southern Nevada test site is also being studied
as a permanent repository for spent radioactive fuel from
commercial nuclear reactors and as a storehouse for the plutonium
cores from dismantled atomic
bombs.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A sunny future for nuclear test site?.
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