Peaceful nuclear explosions documentary - video

[Altair]

Documentary about Project Plowshare, the United States Atomic Energy Commission's program for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes. 28:56 video.

Previously:

Creating a lake using a hydrogen bomb - video
Map of every nuclear explosion since 1945 - photo
Extinguishing an oil well fire using a nuke - GIF
Nuclear waste cask being transported - GIF
Nuclear attack preparedness film - video

[WmRMeyers]

I've flown over the Plowshare crater in Nevada. It's impressive. That was about 38 years ago. It had a small lake in the bottom when I was there. I believe I am glad they didn't go much further with those plans.

[DIYSwede]

"Beat their Swords into Plowshares" [Isaiah 2:3-4] was the general and overt post-war nuclear idea of Ike's (also).

Quite a few Los Alamos and affiliated scientists didn't dig getting into the unemployment lines in late 1945,
so they also started cracking some wild ideas of different "peaceful applications" for nuclear devices (to name a few):
Nuclear propulsion on land, at sea or in the air - and later into space.
Blasting for minerals, oil, gas, and fresh water (sic!) and even using a handful of 'em to get Alaska an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson
(even the Panama Canal was thought could be cost-effectively and instantly widened by nuking thru Nicaragua: "The Pan-Atomic Canal").

So Ed Teller (mr H-Bomb himself) toured thru Alaska trying to sell this pioneering feat, promising huge incomes to the natives:
"We think the holding of a huge nuclear blast in Alaska would be a fitting overture to the new era which is opening for our state."

The AEC did some preliminary studies only to find nuclear fallout had already and effectively propagated into the Alaskan food chain
from the Nevada and other worldwide ground tests, with even more Nevada nucleides added for good measure in some local AEC tests in 1962.
These remains were discovered in the U of Alaska research archive in 1993, only to also be physically found at site, still buried after 30 years.
Project was put on the back burner in 1963, but hasn't ever been officially canceled.

Ah yes - there never were any potential customers nor any practical needs for that harbor in the first place,
so the scientists turned the project into a study on the economic impacts of nuclear fallout on the indigenous communities [-Ahem...].

These communities were not amused. To paraphrase K Marx on religion: "Atomic power is Plutonium for the People!"

https://books.google.se/books?id=8wU...page&q&f=false