Message posted by Peter Merlin on February 05, 2013 at 8:30:30 PST:
It is, without question, the Big Explosives Experimental Facility (BEEF). It is used for non-nuclear testing to study blast effects using high-explosive charges. The pyramid is simply one of two earth-covered, concrete bunkers, that was originally built to monitor atmospheric nuclear tests at Yucca Flat during the 1950s. It was converted to support the BEEF in the 1990s. The need for the BEEF site originated when, due to community encroachment near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) facility in Livermore, California, the Department of Energy was no longer allowed to perform large high explosive experiments at the facility's Site 300, Shaped Charge Scaling Project. Therefore looking at the NTS as a location to continue to perform these large high explosive experiments, two earth-covered, two-foot thick steel reinforced concrete bunkers were located near Yucca Flat and found to be ideally configured for use as a new test site. The facility consists of a control bunker, a camera bunker, a gravel firing table, and associated control and diagnostic systems. The BEEF has conducted conventional high-explosives experiments using a testbed that provides sophisticated diagnostics such as high-speed optics and x-ray radiography on the firing table, while operating personnel are present in the bunker. The WATUSI experiment at the BEEF in September 2002 sought to show that existing seismic and infrasound sensors at the Test Site and across the western U.S. that were used in the days of underground nuclear testing still can detect and characterize explosions accurately. The yield of the experiment was equivalent to approximately 37,000 pounds of TNT (37 kilotons).
In Reply to: Re: Pyramid on NTS near to Papoose Lake ? posted by astra7 on February 05, 2013 at 7:40:06 PST:
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