The Trinity test, which was the world’s first nuclear detonation, was conducted in New Mexico in July 1945. Trinity, however, wasn’t the only nuclear test to take place in the Land of Enchantment. In fact, in the 1960s, New Mexico hosted two others: Gnome and Gasbuggy.
Unlike Trinity, which was part of the Manhattan Project—the World War II–era endeavor to develop the first nuclear weapons—Gnome and Gasbuggy were conducted to assess whether nuclear explosions could be harnessed for peaceful purposes. Neither test produced the results that researchers hoped for, however, and in the intervening decades, the tests have been largely forgotten.
Today, New Mexico’s three nuclear tests are reminders of the complex legacy of the United States’ nuclear testing, which the nation halted after a moratorium was declared in 1992.
Trinity
During the Manhattan Project, scientists at a top-secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico (what is today Los Alamos National Laboratory), designed two kinds of nuclear devices. Their confidence in the first device, a uranium-powered weapon, was such that they felt that no test was necessary. But researchers had enough doubt about the second device, a plutonium-powered implosion design, that they decided to conduct a test in the U.S. Army’s Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, southeast of Socorro, New Mexico.
The Gadget, as the device was code-named, was detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower at around 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945. Today, the Trinity test site is part of White Sands Missile Range, which is administered by the U.S. Army.
Gnome
Unlike Trinity, which was conducted in secret, the Gnome test involved significant fanfare.
In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower popularized the idea of using nuclear technologies for non-military purposes through his Atoms for Peace campaign. This campaign led in turn to the development of Project Plowshare—a series of 27 tests related to the peaceful uses of nuclear explosions. In the early 1960s, U.S. Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico successfully lobbied the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC, the predecessor of today’s Department of Energy) to make his state the site of Project Plowshare’s debut test, which would be called Gnome.
The Gnome test was conducted in an underground salt bed near the town of Carlsbad, New Mexico, on December 10, 1961. The device was detonated at a depth of some 1,200 feet. On hand were 71 members of the media to document that the blast caused the ground to jump as much as 4 feet into the air, producing an underground salt cavern 70 feet high and 150 feet in diameter.
Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which led the test, had hoped that the explosion would create an underground heat reservoir. The idea was that this reservoir could be used to turn water into steam that might be harnessed as a geothermal energy source. No such reservoir was forthcoming, however, and the AEC scrapped plans for a follow-up test.
Although Gnome’s results weren’t what the AEC had hoped, the test did provide data that was later used in Project Pacer, which Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted in the early 1970s to explore the feasibility of using nuclear detonations for steam power generation. After a years-long cleanup, the Gnome test site was turned over to the Bureau of Land Management in 1980.
Gasbuggy
New Mexico’s third nuclear test took place in northwestern New Mexico, near the town of Dulce, in 1967. The test, which was led by Livermore, was named “Gasbuggy” after its designers’ goal: to use a nuclear detonation to improve the flow of natural gas (which would make it easier to collect the gas).
Gasbuggy was a collaboration between the AEC, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and El Paso Natural Gas. Although the test attracted attention from local media, by 1967, interest in the Atoms for Peace program had subsided, which was why the test received almost no national coverage.
On December 10, 1967, the Gasbuggy device was detonated 4,227 feet below ground, creating an underground cavern 160 feet in diameter. However, drilling revealed that the explosion had decreased, rather than increased, the pressure of the natural gas in the belowground reservoir. Worse, the natural gas itself had become radioactive. Two similar tests—Project Rulison, which was led by Los Alamos in Colorado in 1969, and Project Rio Blanco, which was led by Livermore in Colorado in 1973—resulted in similarly radioactive gas, helping to rule out the use of nuclear explosions in natural gas production.
In the intervening decades, the Department of Energy has monitored surface water, ground water, and natural gas near the Gasbuggy test site, which is in the Carson National Forest and managed by the U.S. Forest Service. To date, no Gasbuggy-related contamination has been detected in any nearby water or natural gas. ★