Over nine hundred nuclear weapons, many of larger size, were detonated in Nevada from the early 1950s to 1992. The way the article presents that aspect is odd a

Over nine hundred nuclear weapons, many of larger size, were detonated in Nevada from the early 1950s to 1992. The way the article presents that aspect is odd and suggests an author surprisingly unaware of the history of Nevada and the weapons program. I actually find it somewhat surprising the weapon-stimulated experiment was never attempted, as these kinds of experiments were conducted secondarily to a weapons test fairly routinely. A large portion of Nevada tests supported secondary research by other government agencies, universities, and private industry. A prominent example was a set of buildings to test earthquake-hardening methods, taking advantage of the consistent earthquakes incidentally produced by nuclear tests. I believe the client on that project was the University of California, but that's from memory and sources are hard to come by on older NNSS programs. One of the more famous commercial tests was by the Mosler safe company to demonstrate that their vaults could survive a nuclear attack, although this wasn't totally an independent project as Mosler had a close relationship with the military and the survivability of their vaults had implications on nuclear deterrence, their being used to store parts of the weapons stockpile.