MERCURY, Nev. — More than 400 protesters, including entertainers and scientists, were arrested yesterday at the Nevada Test Site during an anti-nuclear demonstration.
Entertainers Robert Blake, Kris Kristofferson and Martin Sheen were among those handcuffed and taken to nearby Beatty, Nev., where they were booked on trespassing charges and released for trial in March.
Astronomer-author Carl Sagan, his wife, Ann Druyan, and peace activist Daniel Ellsberg also deliberately walked onto government property and were arrested.
The protest, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, had been planned for weeks and was designed to coincide with the first U.S. nuclear weapons test of 1987, an explosion the Soviet Union said would end its 18-month unilateral test moratorium.
The Department of Energy carried out the test Tuesday - two days early. A department spokesman acknowledged that the planned mass protest yesterday was a motivating factor in moving up the test.
Demonstration organizers said their ranks were 2,000 strong. The Department of Energy estimated the crowd at 750.
The protest was the largest in more than six years of demonstrations at the 1,800-square-mile test site, where 660 nuclear weapons have been detonated since 1951.
A total of 438 demonstrators deliberately walked onto the site and were arrested, authorities said. All were charged with trespassing, except for five people accused of resisting arrest.
"It certainly was the largest demonstration in the history of the nuclear testing site," Sagan said. "It is an indication of the growth of our movement."
Meanwhile, a group of 30 Philadelphia physicians yesterday called Tuesday's nuclear test "an unconscionable use of our scarce resources" at a time when important government health programs and other human services were being slashed.
The physicians - in a statement read at a Center City news conference by Lewis W. Bluemle Jr., president of Jefferson Medical College - called for an end to nuclear testing and expressed concern that the test endangered international health by squandering an opportunity to slow the arms race.
Bluemle and the doctors are members of the Philadelphia chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the U.S. arm of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.
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