Project Plowshare

Project Plowshare, named for the biblical promise to beat swords into plowshares, was launched by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957 to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosions. Scientists at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, encouraged by Edward Teller, imagined blasting new harbors, a second Panama Canal and highway cuts through mountains. The most famous test, Sedan, in Nevada on July 6, 1962, used a 104 kiloton device to dig a crater about 390 meters wide and 100 meters deep, throwing radioactive dust high into the air. Other shots, Gasbuggy in New Mexico in 1967, Rulison in Colorado in 1969 and Rio Blanco in 1973, tried to crack rock to release natural gas.⁵⁴

Plowshare ran into the problem it was meant to solve. Excavation blasts spread fallout, and the gas they freed was contaminated with radioactive tritium and could not be sold. A plan called Project Chariot, to blast a harbor at Cape Thompson in Alaska, was dropped in 1962 after opposition from Inupiat villagers and scientists who documented the risks to local food chains. Rising environmental concern and the 1963 test ban treaty limits on fallout crossing borders constrained the program, and funding ended in 1977 after 27 nuclear tests.²¹