The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2), previously the Nevada Test Site (NTS), is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 mi (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas. Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, the site, established on 11 January 1951, for the testing of nuclear devices, is composed of approximately 1,360 sq mi (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain. Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a 1-kilotonne-of-TNT (4.2 TJ) bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat on 27 January 1951. Many of the iconic images of the nuclear era come from NTS.
The Nevada Test Site contains 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, 400 miles (640 km) of paved roads, 300 miles (480 km) of unpaved roads, ten heliports and two airstrips. The most recent test was a sub-critical test of the properties of plutonium, conducted underground on December 7, 2012.
Read more about Nevada Test Site: History, Destruction and Survivability Testing, Environmental Impact, Protests and Demonstrations, NTS Today, Landmarks and Geography, Cancer and Test Site, Nuclear Test Series Carried Out At The Nevada Test Site, Areas, See Also
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“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)