Sedan (nuclear test)
Storax Sedan was a
nuclear test conducted at the
Nevada Test Site at by the
United States on
July 6,
1962 as part of
Operation Plowshare program to investigate the use of
nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes.
The blast had a yield of 104
kilotons (435
terajoules) and displaced more than 11 million
tonnes (12 million short tons) of soil and resulted in a
radioactive cloud that rose to an altitude of 3.7 km (12,000 feet). The radioactive dust plume headed northeast and then east towards the Mississippi River. It created a
crater 100 m (320 feet) deep and has a diameter of about 390 m (1,280 feet). It is about 21
km (13 miles) away from
Area 51.
The crater from the test is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
On
March 2,
2005 Ellen Tauscher, a
Democratic member of the
U.S. House of Representatives representing the state of
California, gave congressional testimony on the containment of nuclear testing debris, using the Sedan test as an example of one which produced a considerable amount of radioactive
fallout. A reporter mistook the word Sedan for the
Sudan, an
east African nation, and this mistake was placed into the
Congressional Record. Within days of this error, the international community took notice. Sudanese officals responded to this stating that "the Sudanese government takes this issue seriously and with extreme importance," and
China's
Xinhua General News Service even went so far as to publish an article claiming that the Sudanese government had blamed the U.S. for raising
cancer rates among the Sudanese people. Despite the U.S. embassy in Khartoum issuing a statement regarding the error, the Sudanese Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, stated that they would continue investigating.
BBC.
*
Information about the Storax test series, including the Sedan shot
*
Federation of American Scientists page about the Sedan/Sudan mixup
