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Need to move some ground to build a canal or harbor? How about using an atomic bomb? How about 764 atomic bombs? This was seriously researched and planned by United States government scientists from 1957 to 1974.
Scott Kirsch, an assistant professor of geography, details this Cold War corollary in a new book, “Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving.”
While researching the rise and fall of Project Plowshare, Kirsch found that government scientists estimated that a new canal built in Panama or Colombia would require a nuclear explosion 20,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. Scientists created a map to show affected areas. They assumed that 30,000 people would need to be relocated upwind from the explosions. This particular five-year $17.5-million study was authorized by Congress, as was the whole of Project Plowshare for some $750 million over 17 years, according to Kirsch.
Most people know that nuclear devices were exploded under the Nevada desert creating massive craters; the largest and most well-known is called Sedan. Many of these Nevada tests were part of Project Plowshare.
Kirsch said that famed physicist and anticommunist Edward Teller backed the project because he believed that nuclear earthmoving was an important part of geographical engineering.
“We will change the earth’s surface to suit us,” Teller proclaimed.
Kirsch said that radioactivity hazards and the difficult task of evaluating them challenged Teller’s optimism from the start. Still, Kirsch said that it’s easy in hindsight to see the inappropriateness of Project Plowshare. But the program lasted so long for a reason. In his book, Kirsch examines the “intermingling of scientific, technical, political, security and cultural discourses and logics” of the era.
He said the idea of nuclear earthmoving and turning atomic explosions into something positive fascinated weapons scientists. He found that 54 projects in 25 countries were considered for potential nuclear excavation sites. Ultimately, the project was shelved because atomic fallout could not be predicted and was more harmful than thought.
“This is a book about the hubris of a Cold War nuclear weapons laboratory looking to diversify into civil engineering and regional development,” Kirsch said. “But I also wanted to tell the story of the opposition that these experiments galvanized, especially among environmental scientists.”
In 1959, for example, Project Plowshare moved to Alaska for Project Chariot, the creation of a harbor near Point Hope on Alaska’s northwest shore. Newspaper editorialists and an Alaska Senator were initially swayed by Teller’s argument. Biologists and other faculty at the University of Alaska were not. This was the beginning of an opposition that eventually stretched to the local Eskimo population in Point Hope.
“This opposition was critical both to the eventual defeat of Plowshare and to the development of the environmental movement in this country,” Kirsch said. “From Plowshare, we can learn about the role of science in environmental politics, as well as the politics of science itself.”
Provided by Research and Economic Development.
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Mark Derewicz