Citing harm from nuclear weapons fallout in the past, a Salt Lake group is calling for the Department of Energy to hold public hearings in St. George on a proposal to build a new radiological detection center at the Nevada Test Site.

Citizens Education Project says in a June 19 letter to the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration that Utahns should have a better opportunity to comment on the project.

A hearing should be held in St. George to tell the public about the proposal and accept verbal comments, says the note, written by Steve Erickson, the activist group's director. If needed, the comment period for the project should be extended for the hearing and to give Utahns time to send in written statements, he added.

"Given Utah's disastrous experience with exposures to fallout from NTS nuclear tests, there will be considerable concern in 'downwind communities' about the nature and potential impacts of this project," Erickson wrote in a letter to Dirk Schmidhofer, environmental documents manager for proposal.

Formal name of the project is the "Radiological/Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex," proposed for the test site, a large base that extends to within about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Occupying 50 acres of the NTS' 1,350 square miles, the complex would offer training for officers who might be called upon to detect smuggled radioactive material. The facility could be expanded to 100 acres, says an environmental assessment prepared by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Mock-up ports of entry and airport sites would be built to give training on detecting smuggling.

A highly radioactive neutron beam is envisioned as part of the project. Based in a shaft in the middle of a roadway, the device would allow a neutron beam to sweep across moving containers on the road. "Shielding and exclusion areas would be established to protect personnel from receiving unsafe radiation doses," says the assessment.

Erickson wrote that his group disagrees strongly with a statement in the assessment that no populations could be subjected to disproportionately high adverse effects from the facility.

"Adverse effects to many thousands, if not millions of Americans due to nuclear testing at the NTS are well known and documented," he said, referring to nuclear explosions in the past. "To dismiss this reality is offensive." The letter says that the group could accept the assurances about no bad impacts on human health off the site if it were assured nothing would go wrong. That is assuming "that there will be no accidents, sabotage, terrorism or other incidents during transportation or operation of the complex that would result in loss of radiological sources or dispersion of their contents."