Mike Goad
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2006
- Posts
- 307
A little more history that I can recall about the area.
At the time of WWII, the site was restricted for a reason other than nuclear. Big guns from naval ships were sent to the Naval Ordnance Plant at Pocatello for refurbishment as repeated firings eroded the bore and wore out the rifling. The guns then needed to be test fired and the Naval Proving Ground was born, about nine miles wide by thirty six miles long. Besides testing the gun barrels, other tests were done at the site. On August 29, 1945, at 9:36 a.m. Mountain Time, the Navy exploded 250,000 pounds of TNT, resulting in a mushroom cloud of dust. It was one of the largest intentional, non-nuclear detonations ever!
I used to go by some of the remnants from that time on my way to work each day.
The Naval Proving Ground was the core of what is now the Idaho National Laboratory.
For those who might be interested, there's a free book on line called Proving the Principle that tells the story of the Idaho National Laboratory. I used a couple of chapters from in a class I taught a couple of years ago at Arkansas Nuclear One.
At the time of WWII, the site was restricted for a reason other than nuclear. Big guns from naval ships were sent to the Naval Ordnance Plant at Pocatello for refurbishment as repeated firings eroded the bore and wore out the rifling. The guns then needed to be test fired and the Naval Proving Ground was born, about nine miles wide by thirty six miles long. Besides testing the gun barrels, other tests were done at the site. On August 29, 1945, at 9:36 a.m. Mountain Time, the Navy exploded 250,000 pounds of TNT, resulting in a mushroom cloud of dust. It was one of the largest intentional, non-nuclear detonations ever!
I used to go by some of the remnants from that time on my way to work each day.
The Naval Proving Ground was the core of what is now the Idaho National Laboratory.
For those who might be interested, there's a free book on line called Proving the Principle that tells the story of the Idaho National Laboratory. I used a couple of chapters from in a class I taught a couple of years ago at Arkansas Nuclear One.