A wildfire that started last week at the Nevada National Security Site was still burning over about 490 acres north of the Site’s area 12 at deadline Monday.
“The fire is not burning, and has not burned, in any contaminated areas,” the site wrote in a press release on Friday. “Due to inaccessibility of the remote terrain, firefighters are not currently fighting the fire.”
There were 61 nuclear tests and 62 nuclear detonations at Area 12 before the self-imposed U.S. testing moratorium in 1992. Area 12 is in the site’s north-central region.
At under 500 acres, the Area 12 fire, first spotted last Tuesday, ranks among the smaller ones at the test site this wildfire season. A series of fires in June and July covered some 1,300 acres in the sprawling desert site’s western area.
Those were themselves dwarfed by the Cherrywood fire, which at the beginning of the season in May, burned over more than 20,000 acres before responders could fully contain it.
