MASSIVE TOWER AT NEVADA NATIONAL SECURITY SITE TO BE DEMOLISHED

By ExchangeMonitor

A tower that was used for above-ground nuclear experiments during the 1960s will finally be demolished next week. The Bare Reactor Experiment-Nevada (BREN) Tower stands 1,527 feet tall, and is larger than the Empire State Building in New York City and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower. The NNSA said it will be the tallest structure to be destroyed in a planned demolition when officials from DEMCO, Inc. and Controlled Demolition, Inc. bring the tower down May 23. The tower, which is made of 51 sections of high-tensile steel and is anchored to the ground by 5 ½ miles of steel wire, hasn’t been used in decades, and safety concerns for nearby workers and danger to flying aircraft fueled the decision to demolish the tower. The NNSA said it would cost more than $1 million to make the tower usable again for scientific research. It will cost $450,000 to demolish the tower, according to a spokesman for site contractor National Security Technologies, LLC.

The tower was built in 1962 to estimate radiation doses received by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings—it used an unshielded reactor to emit radiation—and it was built 1,527 feet tall to mimic the height at which the “Little Boy” bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. It was also used to study radiation shielding, neutron activation in soil, and radiation measuring techniques. It hasn’t been used with a reactor since 1968, and hasn’t been used for any documented scientific purposes since 1991, NSTec spokesman Dante Pistone said.

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