By Whitney Donohue
Moapa Valley Progress
Members of Moapa Valley Boy Scout Troop 118 fulfilled a year-long dream on Saturday when they attended a Nuclear Science Merit Badge Workshop at the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.
The day started with a tour of the Atomic Testing Museum at Desert Research Institute, where scouts Steven Donohue, Kurtis McAlister, Mackenzie Nelson, and TC Twelker saw a variety of different nuclear paraphernalia, including missiles.
They also attended lectures about topics related to nuclear science taught by UNLV graduate students.
After lunch the Scouts visited the Harry Reid Center on the UNLV campus and toured some nuclear science labs. The scouts got to try out Geiger counters and had a demonstration of a cloud chamber, which the scientists use to track alpha particle trails.
Scouts said that their favorite part of the day was the tour at the Atomic Testing Museum.
“I liked seeing the different missiles and bombs they had there,” Twelker said.
“I liked the tour the best, especially since we didn’t learn how to build our own bombs,” Nelson said.
McAlister liked learning about “Atomic Cocktail Parties,” which were an advertising ploy of Las Vegas casinos during the above-ground nuclear testing phase at the Nevada Test Site. The casinos offered travel packages to come to Vegas to see the atomic blasts.
“It was cool to watch the films in the bunkers, and it was different to see Las Vegas in the past,” McAlister said.
Although the workshop conflicted with the Moapa
Valley “Scouting for Food” drive, the scouts decided they had been waiting too long to miss the opportunity to work on the merit badge.
The Atomic Testing Museum is open to the public. For more information on the museum, visit http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org.
