When the federal government promises residents who live downwind from a planned explosion at the Nevada Test Site that they are in no danger, the reassurances have a hollow resonance.
    Such promises are eerily familiar to victims of 1950s nuclear testing and their families who have lived with the deadly effects of the radioactive dust scattered over the West by the above-ground blasts.
    Now the Pentagon expects downwinders to buy similar not-to-worry claims about Divine Strake, a non-nuclear chemical blast planned for the spring that would be nearly 50 times larger than the biggest known conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
    Excuse our scepticism.
    First came the ludicrous official statement that radioactive dust remaining from the Cold War-era nuclear testing (that initially had been claimed to be non-existent) would somehow remain within the boundaries of the test site. Now the Pentagon says a new study has shown that, yes, the contaminated dust could be blown sky-high by the enormous explosion and deliver a dose of radioactivity to the off-site public.
    But wait. The Pentagon promises that exposure to residents of even the nearest town, 12 miles away, would not be "significant." The report did not gauge possible exposure farther away, even though studies of the old nuclear tests have shown that some Westerners hundreds of miles from the test site became sick and died from the fallout.
    Granted, this non-nuclear test likely would be less dangerous than its nuclear predecessors, but any danger to civilians is absolutely unacceptable.
    The Pentagon says it needs the test results to help develop computer models to simulate the damage to underground targets that would be inflicted by bunker-buster bombs. We are concerned that this is double-talk to disguise plans for a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons, now banned by Congress. Such a covert escalation of the nuclear arms race would not only be illegal, but likely would encourage Iran and other countries to speed developent of their own nuclear weapons.
    Utahns and Nevadans have a chance in upcoming hearings to tell the Pentagon what they think of this reckless idea. They should speak plainly. Because the only sure way to prevent Divine Strake from raining radioactive debris on civilians is to junk the whole project, permanently.
   
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     with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *