Hanford’s Role in Creating the Most Cratered Landscape on Earth

Yucca Flat, Nevada is considered the most cratered landscape on Earth, not from ancient asteroids, but from decades of nuclear bomb tests by the United States during the Cold War.

How many nuclear tests were conducted at Yucca Flat, Nevada?

928 nuclear tests were conducted at the Test Site, Yucca Flat, from the early 1950s into the early 1990s. Yucca Flat is about 65 miles from Las Vegas. Most of the craters are not impact craters, they are from underground tests. Only 100 of the 928 tests were atmospheric.

Get our free mobile app

What was the largest atmospheric test conducted at Yucca Flat?

Of all the tests conducted at Yucca Flat, Operation Plumbbob, was the largest in the atmospheric category in the United States. It was 74-kilotons which is five times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Nearly 2,000 soldiers took part in nuclear battlefield training operations before, during, and after the explosion.

What was the largest underground test conducted at Yucca Flat?

The Sedan Test, which was 30 more kilotons than Plumbbob, was conducted underground to determine if nuclear bombs could be used “peacefully” by creating massive craters that could be made into lakes or canals. This test took place in July of 1962 and its enormous crater displaced twelve million tons of dirt, leaving a crater 320 feet deep and 1280 feet wide.

How was the Hanford Site involved with Yucca Flats?

The Hanford Site, home of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, produced the materials and plutonium used for the Trinity Test and the atomic bombs that ended World War II. Between the 1950s and late 1980s, nearly two-thirds of the plutonium used in nuclear tests and the United States nuclear weapons stockpile was produced at the Hanford Site.