J Truman, a Malad, Idaho, man who grew up in southern Utah and is the director of the fallout victim advocacy group Downwinders, said the experiment shows the bunker buster nuclear bomb idea isn't dead.

"Simulating a nuclear bunker buster and testing one are not that far removed from each other," Truman said in an e-mail.

The test indicates the Pentagon is determined to move forward with new nuclear weapons development, Erickson said.

"Down the road, if we develop new weapons, we more than likely will test then. We have never fielded, put into the arsenal, a new nuclear weapon that wasn't first actually tested."

While some weapons were modified with being tested, he said, "a brand-new warhead would more than likely be subjected to actual test explosion."

That implies the Nevada Test Site would host a real nuclear test again someday, Erickson said. It would be "the death knell for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty" under which nuclear testing was stopped.

Truman said Americans seem to forget that the late President John F. Kennedy spoke out against nuclear testing at the time of the test ban treaty, warning that it could lead to actual use of nuclear weapons.

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