WASHINGTON — Federal officials again insisted Friday that a proposed non-nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site would not harm people living downwind.

Officials also said they would discuss the test at public meetings in Las Vegas on Jan. 9, Salt Lake City on Jan. 10, and St. George, Utah, on Jan. 11.

The blast, called "Divine Strake," would send a mushroom-shaped dust cloud high over the Nevada desert.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency released a new environmental report Friday to respond to fears that radioactive material from decades of previous weapons tests would be released by the blast and scattered across Nevada and southern Utah.

Although there is radioactive material in two locations about a mile from the proposed blast site, it is "extremely unlikely" that the material would become "resuspended" and cause harm, the report said.

"Because the nearest member of the public resides approximately 12 miles from the (test site) boundary, this individual would receive only a minute fraction of the modeled dose," according to the report, which exceeds 250 pages.

Two Utah lawmakers — Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican — and others were reading the report to look for information that would address their concerns about possible health and safety risks if the blast takes place.

"We're happy to see that they scheduled some public meetings," Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrand said Friday. She said Matheson will be reading the report closely, "looking particularly at the additional environmental information they were supposed to supply about the extent of contamination at the site."

She said Matheson was not satisfied with previous reports that failed to address the level of radioactive contamination in the test site's soil from past nuclear tests and the health risks the Divine Strake test would pose by sending that soil into the air.

The test of bunker-buster bombs was postponed in June.

"We found a number of problems with the first analysis, and we want to make sure that those have been corrected and that there aren't any other concerns that need to be addressed," Hatch said in a statement.

Robert Hager, a Reno-based lawyer representing an Indian tribe and people living downwind, had not seen the report but was skeptical.

He said the government acknowledged the danger in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990.

"It issued an apology to downwinder Americans for causing tens of thousands of cancers with the same material that's in the soil at the test site," he said.

"The downwinders I represent are terrified at the prospect of history repeating itself," Hager said. "Yet this government seems committed to this very thing."

Public comments on the report will be accepted until Jan. 24.

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Contributing: Doug Smeath, Deseret Morning News; Ken Ritter, Associated Press