Yucca Flat
Yucca Flat is a closed desert drainage basin, one of four major nuclear test regions within the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and is divided into nine test sections: Areas 1 through 4 and 6 through 10. Yucca Flat is located at the eastern edge of NTS, about ten miles (16 km) north of Frenchman Flat, and 65 miles (105 km) from Las Vegas, Nevada. Yucca Flat was the site for 739 nuclear tests – nearly four of every five tests carried out at the NTS.
Yucca Flat has been called "the most irradiated, nuclear-blasted spot on the face of the earth". In March 2009, TIME identified the 1970 Yucca Flat Baneberry Test, where 86 workers were exposed to radiation, as one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.
The open, sandy geology of Yucca Flat in the Tonopah Basin made for straightforward visual documentation of atmospheric nuclear tests. When testing went underground, deep layers of sedimentary soil from the erosion of the surrounding mountains allowed for relatively easy drilling of test holes.
Hundreds of subsidence craters dot the desert floor. A crater could develop when an underground nuclear explosion vaporized surrounding bedrock and sediment. The vapor cooled to liquid lava and pooled at the bottom of the cavity created by the explosion. Cracked rock and sediment layers above the explosion often settled into the cavity to form a crater.
At the south end of Yucca Flat is Yucca Lake, also called Yucca Dry Lake. The dry, alkaline lake bed holds a restricted runway (Yucca Airstrip) which was built by the Army Corps of Engineers before nuclear testing began in the area. To the west of the dry lake bed is News Nob, a rocky outcropping from which journalists and VIPs were able to watch atmospheric nuclear tests at Yucca Flat.
West of the dry lake bed, cresting the top of Yucca Pass, is Control Point, or CP-1, the 31,600 sq ft (2,940 m2) complex of buildings which contains testing and monitoring equipment for nuclear tests, and a cafeteria that seats 32. CP-1 overlooks both Yucca and Frenchman Flats. Today, Control Point is the center for support of all activity at the NTS.
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