A limestone quarry in Indiana had been mentioned in news reports as a possible site after officials from the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency told Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch that they were looking at relocating the test. In a letter Tuesday to Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, the acting director of the agency, Michael K. Evenson, wrote that "DTRA has no plans to conduct Divine Strake in the State of Indiana. Any discussion to the contrary is incorrect."

The Divine Strake test entails detonating 700 tons of explosives at the Nevada Test Site to measure the damage done to a tunnel by the blast and the 3.4-magnitude earthquake it would create.

Pentagon budget documents said the test was designed to help war planners choose the smallest possible nuclear weapon to destroy underground targets, but Pentagon officials later said the reference to nuclear weapons was a mistake.

The Divine Strake explosion would be roughly 50 times larger than the blast from the largest conventional weapon and on par with small nuclear weapons.

The test had been scheduled for June 2, but was postponed after members of Congress questioned the planning and a lawsuit was filed by a Nevada Indian tribe and a group of Downwinders, individuals who say their cancers and other illnesses were caused by Cold War nuclear tests in Nevada.

Earlier this month, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency notified Congress that the test would not proceed until several months into 2007, at the earliest, and that the agency would look at other potential sites.

Several similar blasts, some several times larger than Divine Strake, were conducted between 1977 and 1991 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Also on Wednesday, the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dale Klein, said he supports the Divine Strake test. Klein, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said the Divine Strake test would improve computer models designed to calculate how much force is needed to destroy an underground target.

He also reiterated earlier statements that some renewed nuclear tests might help improve nuclear weapons reliability.