\n Posted on: October 30, 2025, 04:38h.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n Last updated on: October 30, 2025, 08:43h.\n <\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nWhen President Trump posted to Truth Social on Wednesday that he had ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing \u201cimmediately,\u201d Las Vegas government leaders clapped back.<\/p>\n They knew that the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), 65 miles northwest of the Strip, is the only US location capable of conducting full-scale nuclear explosive tests. And, if expediency is the priority that the president claims it is, then building a new location will take too much time.<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d Nevada Democratic US Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nevada, tweeted Wednesday.<\/a> \u201cI\u2019ll be introducing legislation to put a stop to this.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump says he ordered the resumption because other countries are testing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cWe halted it many years ago, but with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate we do so also,\u201d he told reporters aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n This aligns with Project 2025, the document that has served as a blueprint for multiple Trump administration policies. It called for the US to \u201crestore the nuclear infrastructure\u201d and \u201creadiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis directly contradicts the commitments I secured from Trump nominees \u2014 and the opinion of Administration officials who certify our nuclear stockpile \u2014 who\u2019ve told me explosive nuclear testing would not happen & is unnecessary,\u201d added US Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, in her own tweet<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll fight to stop this,\u201d she vowed.<\/p>\n A January 1951 detonation was the first of 100 in the air over the 1,355 square-mile Nevada Proving Ground, which was carved out from the Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range. (In 1955, its name was changed to the Nevada Test Site, followed by a 2010 name change to the NNSS.)<\/p>\n The aboveground tests \u2014 whose mushroom clouds were watched by tourists from Las Vegas bars and hotels during \u201catomic viewing parties\u201d<\/a> \u2014 ended with the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963.<\/p>\n Most people believe nuclear testing came to an end then. However, it continued until September 1992, when the Mirage was already three years old.<\/p>\n That 828 more nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site wasn\u2019t common knowledge because none of the them produced a mushroom cloud visible in Las Vegas \u2014 only the occasional ground rumble.<\/p>\n All those explosions left vast swaths of the Nevada site irradiated, with fallout exposure tied to elevated rates of cancer and other severe illnesses among workers and nearby residents.<\/p>\n They\u2019re even implicated in the deaths of movie star John Wayne and the other cast and crew of the 1954 film \u201cThe Conqueror,\u201d which filmed 137 miles downwind of the Nevada Proving Ground. (Of the 200 people who worked on it, 91 developed cancer.<\/a>)<\/p>\n Tireless lobbying by self-proclaimed \u201cdownwinders\u201d got Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) to spearhead the 1990 passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The $100 million compensation package offered $50,000 each to the families of all residents of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona able to link cancers and other diseases to their fallout exposure.<\/p>\n A congressional moratorium on all nuclear testing \u2014 driven by health, environmental and geopolitical concerns \u2014 was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. The final test, codenamed Divider, was conducted on September 23, 1992.<\/p>\n Since then, the National Nuclear Security Administration has conducted only subcritical (non-exploding) nuclear weapons experiments on the site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/main-858x571.webp\")
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Underground Zero<\/h2>\n