Today, in the middle of nowhere in the once-irradiated Nevada desert, a tower taller than the Empire State building came tumbling down. The 1,527 foot, 345 ton BREN tower was used to study the fallout from nuclear bombs like those dropped on Hiroshima—it was built to the exact height from which “Little Boy” was loosed above Japan. The tower was constructed in 1962, probably around when the guilt pangs for wiping tens of thousands of people off the face of the earth with a single nuclear riptide had started to set in.It was demolished, says the National Nuclear Safety Administration, because it’d grown too old and rusty and tough to maintain.CNN details its former glory: "To conduct research at the time, engineers mounted a small unshielded (bare) reactor on the tower and built a mock Japanese village near the base of the tower. The mock village was intended to simulate the shielding effects that rooftops and walls had on radiation, according to Dante Pistone, public affairs manager for the Nevada National Security Site.Scientists used the research to estimate radiation doses residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subjected to when the bomb detonated. According to the Nevada National Security Site, the data became a cornerstone of modern radiation research."Timber:Despite being an obviously fascinating story on its face, it’s the scale of the project that strikes me most. Can you imagine the U.S. government erecting a building bigger than the Empire State today for the express purpose of research? I think not.To me, it reflects the (sometimes terrifying) grandeur of the scientific pursuits of the 60s, before research budgets withered away or were absorbed into the Defense bracket. It was a weird moment, to be sure—until yesterday, you could drive out into middle of Nevada and find a miniature Japanese town at the foot of a service elevator the size of a skyscraper, after all—but it harbored a determined thirst for knowledge that’s been evaporating since the space race.And when we shutter our space programs and demolish massive towers dedicated to nuclear research, it’s worth looking at what’s left in their wake: comparatively, not a whole hell of a lot.
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