My Sordid Past

Mercury, Nevada, a closed city,
60 miles north of Las Vegas
where I and about 10,000 others lived and worked.

I made a discovery in Las Vegas that allows me to divulge a past that I have kept secret since the 1970’s.  Heretofore, the world might have been destroyed if I had revealed what I am about to tell you.  Well, probably not, but as most of you know I have worked for civil engineering firms for most of a career that is mostly ended now.  Being single and less expensive to relocate, they often sent me to far-flung assignments, or loaned me to other companies as temporary needs arose, including the Atomic Energy Commission. 

An underground test about to be begin.
I might have drawn plans for the roads shown here. 

A nuclear device being
lowered into a hole for testing.

Oh, I did not make bombs, but at the Nevada Test Site, I drew plans for roads and waterlines to serve the testing of nuclear devices.

I could not take any pictures, or remove anything from the site, not even my notes, or even discuss the projects I worked on with anyone not in a particular group.  Over the years, I was never sure how much had been declassified, so I simply didn’t talk about it and tried to forget. 

The crater left after a test because
a great cavity, 5,000 feet deep, collapsed.

But I cannot forget the rumble of ground, the shaking of our safe room, at the very time they said it would happen.  Then after the “all clear,” returning to my desk to find a few things toppled over.

Aerial view of an area called Jackass Flat. 
The round depressions are collapsed ground
from underground nuclear tests.

I visited the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas to see how much the public was being shown of our episodes and secret lives, and to assume that anything shown there I could talk about.  All of the pictures included here are from the museum.  

I drew the plans for facilities like this where low-level waste was packed into barrels, and buried.  It was radioactive, but not at levels high enough to justify placing deep in solid rock tunnels.  

A nuclear rocket engine being transported to the test site. 

Most my work was not for underground tests, but rather for nuclear rocket engines.  Chemical rockets have served us well, but the relatively low amount of energy they deliver for a given mass of fuel imposes severe restrictions on spacecraft.  Nuclear rockets, in contrast, could greatly reduce the time in getting to mars and the outer planets.  The spacecraft, with its nuclear thrusters, would be launched atop a conventional chemical rocket.  Then, once the payload is in orbit, the nuclear reactor would start up.

But testing them on the ground would expose everyone to radioactivity.  So we designed a deluge of water spraying into the exhaust, and collected it with the radioactivity, and then treated it.  

I cannot return to Mercury; it’s still a secret place, though mostly abandoned, I hear.  But telling my story was a very therapeutic exercize for me.  I now hold one less memory that I am unable to tell anyone about. 

Near the museum is this contorted building, for which I take no responsibility.  It is the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, and I question the mental health of its designer.  Part of it really is a building, but part is cleverly placed facade to appear as one structure.