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The first atmospheric test was conducted at the site's Frenchman Flat area by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) on January 27, 1951. About 928 nuclear tests were conducted here through 1994, when the United States stopped its underground nuclear testing.
On January 27, 1951, the first atmospheric nuclear test was detonated at the NTS, code-named “Able.” A total of 100 atmospheric tests were conducted at the NTS until July 1962. All atmospheric testing was banned on August 5, 1963, when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow, giving birth to the age of underground testing.
Nevada Test Site (NTS), nuclear testing site operated by the U.S. Department of Energy and located in Nye County, Nevada, that saw a total of 928 nuclear explosive tests between January 1951 and September 1992.
- Justin Kautz
Nuclear Testing. On January 27, 1951, nuclear testing at the NTS officially began with the detonation of Shot Able, a 1-kiloton bomb, as part of Operation Ranger. Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. government conducted a total of 928 nuclear tests here. Out of these tests 100 were atmospheric, and 828 were underground.
Nuclear testing at the NTS was conducted in two distinct eras: the atmospheric testing era (January 1951 through October 1958) and the underground testing era (1961 to 1992). On 31 October 1958, the United States and the Soviet Union entered into voluntary test moratoria which lasted until the USSR. resumed testing on 01 September 1961.
Between 1951 and 1962, 126 atmospheric tests of atomic weapons were conducted within the Test Site's boundaries. Subsidence craters from underground nuclear testing. In 2010, the NTS is renamed the Nevada National Security Site
The first true underground test of a nuclear explosive, with the blast entirely contained underground, was the 1.7 kt Plumbob Rainier (16:59:59.5 19 September 1957 at Area 12 of NTS). Operation Nougat (September 1961 - April 1962) was the first test series to be conducted underground.
