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LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A lawyer for an Indian tribe opposed to a non-nuclear explosion expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert said Friday he expects the test will be postponed, although federal officials said it remains on schedule.
Spokesmen for two federal agencies planning the Divine Strake explosion said it was still planned June 2 at the Nevada Test Site.
Robert Hager, a Reno lawyer representing the Western Shoshone tribe and Nevada and Utah "downwinders" in a bid to block the explosion, said a Department of Justice lawyer told him it will be delayed to let the National Nuclear Security Administration and Defense Threat Reduction Agency revise safety data and environmental assessments.
Hager filed court papers Friday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas referring to the three-week delay, to June 23.
David Rigby, a spokesman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Va., denied the date had been reset.
"We don't have any postponement at this time," he said.
Kevin Rohrer, an National Nuclear Security Administration official in North Las Vegas, said he had no immediate information about a date change.
A revised environmental assessment distributed Friday to Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn and members of the Nevada and Utah congressional delegations "indicates that we're OK to go forward with the experiment, from an environmental perspective," Rohrer said.
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection spokesman Dante Pistone said Friday his agency would review that document, but had not issued required authorization to allow the test to proceed.
"We haven't given them a date certain when we'll be able to sign off," the state official said.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency claims the blast will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets. Critics have called the blast a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb.
A federal judge is scheduled May 23 to hear Hager's request, filed April 20 in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the test.
The 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb will use materials similar to those that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, but some 280 times larger. It is expected to generate a mushroom cloud 10,000 feet high.
Nevada state officials have expressed concerns that the blast will spew hazardous materials and kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted from 1951 to 1992 at the vast Nevada Test Site, some 65 miles north of Las Vegas.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
