Utahns don't want this bomb

Even if the bomb known as Divine Strake were completely safe, it should not be exploded in Nevada.

That's because, in Utah, nearby bombs cannot be set off in a vacuum. Every blast carries with it echoes from the past, and those echoes remind too many people of loved ones who died of strange and rare cancers after living too close to nuclear bomb tests in the mid-20th century.

Frankly, to come back here talking about setting off a big bomb — 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil — even if it isn't nuclear, is an insult to those tender memories. And the so-called hearing the federal government held in Salt Lake City last week — designed more to explain what is going to happen than to hear anyone's concerns — also was an insult.

We agree with Rep. Jim Matheson and Sen. Orrin Hatch, who reached across their own political differences and co-authored a letter saying they are disappointed and want some real hearings, instead. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency needs to listen to what Utahns have to say. They need to understand the level of frustration and distrust that exists here because promises made years ago turned out to be false.

Divine Strake is being billed as a way to test how well conventional weapons can penetrate underground bunkers. The government plans to set up elaborate bunkers beneath the test site in areas near those that once were used for underground nuclear blasts, then set off the bomb.

It's hard to argue with the need to destroy bunkers. Every recent bad guy from Saddam Hussein to Slobodan Milosovic used them to escape military attacks. For that matter, Hitler had a bunker. But in a world of computer simulations, there has got to be a better way to do this than to once again send mushroom clouds into the air over Utah.

Critics worry that the bomb would displace dirt that remains contaminated from all those previous explosions. The government says those fears are unfounded. One official went so far as to say he would have no worries standing downwind from the explosion with his own children.

He may be right. But Utahns have heard those kinds of assurances before, and now they're reading about studies that show virtually everyone in the lower 48 was affected by the tests in the '50s and '60s.

And in the meantime, they're being treated to confusing public meetings in which residents who get vocal are being physically removed. At the least, Utahns deserve to be heard respectfully. A better solution, however, would be to take the bomb somewhere else.