Project 2025 push to resume nuclear testing in Nevada sparks fallout in Utah

A conservative think tank’s push to resume nuclear testing in Nevada has opponents in Utah up in arms, many of whom are calling it a half-cocked idea that could trigger more radioactive contamination and reignite a global weapons race.

The resumption of underground nuclear weapons testing is one of the key planks in the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025, an uber-conservative playbook intended to serve as a blueprint for former President Donald Trump should he be elected to a second term in November.

Between 1951 and 1992, 928 nuclear bomb tests — 828 of them underground — were conducted at the Nevada site before the U.S. enacted a moratorium on further testing. Many of the tests, especially those conducted aboveground during the 1950s and early 1960s, exposed tens of thousands of Utahns and others in surrounding states — dubbed “downwinders” — to deadly radioactive fallout now known to cause several types of cancer, according to the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Story by Mark Eddington
Video by Trevor Christensen
The Salt Lake Tribune

[cw]

oh boy. how do we get this in front of more Utahns?

[elenak]

Another piece of misinformation from the salt lake tribune.