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A nuclear explosive is an explosive device that derives its energy from nuclear reactions. Almost all nuclear explosive devices that have been designed and produced are nuclear weapons intended for warfare.
Project Plowshare was the overall United States program for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes. The program was organized in June 1957 as part of the worldwide Atoms for Peace efforts. As part of the program, 35 nuclear warheads were detonated in 27 separate tests. A similar program was carried out in the Soviet Union under the name Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy.
Project Chariot was a 1958 United States Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices.
The Boise River is a 102-mile-long (164 km) tributary of the Snake River in the Northwestern United States. It drains a rugged portion of the Sawtooth Range in southwestern Idaho northeast of Boise, as well as part of the western Snake River Plain. The watershed encompasses approximately 4,100 square miles (11,000 km2) of highly diverse habitats, including alpine canyons, forest, rangeland, agricultural lands, and urban areas.
Amchitka is a volcanic, tectonically unstable and uninhabited island in the Rat Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in southwest Alaska. It is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The island, with a land area of roughly 116 square miles (300 km2), is about 42 miles (68 km) long and 1 to 4 miles wide. The area has a maritime climate, with many storms, and mostly overcast skies.
Project PACER, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the mid-1970s, explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs —or, as stated in a later proposal, fission bombs—inside an underground cavity. Its proponents claimed that the system is the only fusion power system that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. It would also require a continuous supply of nuclear explosives and contemporary economics studies demonstrated that these could not be produced at a competitive price compared to conventional energy sources.
Operation Hardtack I was a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States from April 28 to August 18 in 1958 at the Pacific Proving Grounds. At the time of testing, the Operation Hardtack I test series included more nuclear detonations than the total of prior nuclear explosions in the Pacific Ocean. These tests followed the Project 58/58A series, which occurred from 1957 December 6 to 1958, March 14, and preceded the Operation Argus series, which took place in 1958 from August 27 to September 6.
Storax Sedan was a shallow underground nuclear test conducted in Area 10 of Yucca Flat at the Nevada National Security Site on July 6, 1962, as part of Operation Plowshare, a program to investigate the use of nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes. The radioactive fallout from the test contaminated more US residents than any other nuclear test. The Sedan Crater is the largest human-made crater in the United States and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway is a 234-mile (377 km) artificial U.S. waterway built in the 20th century from the Tennessee River to the junction of the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system near Demopolis, Alabama. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway links commercial navigation from the nation's midsection to the Gulf of Mexico. The major features of the waterway are 234 miles (377 km) of navigation channels, a 175-foot-deep (53 m) cut between the watersheds of the Tombigbee and Tennessee rivers, and ten locks and dams. The locks are 9 by 110 by 600 feet, the same dimension as those on the Mississippi above Lock and Dam 26 at Alton, Illinois. Under construction for 12 years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway was completed in December 1984 at a total cost of nearly $2 billion.
Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) are nuclear explosions conducted for non-military purposes. Proposed uses include excavation for the building of canals and harbours, electrical generation, the use of nuclear explosions to drive spacecraft, and as a form of wide-area fracking. PNEs were an area of some research from the late 1950s into the 1980s, primarily in the United States and Soviet Union.
Project Gnome was the first nuclear test of Project Plowshare and was the first continental nuclear weapon test since Trinity to be conducted outside of the Nevada Test Site, and the second test in the state of New Mexico after Trinity. It was tested in southeastern New Mexico on December 10, 1961, approximately 40 km southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from Barstow, California, to Wilmington, North Carolina. The segment of I-40 in California is sometimes called the Needles Freeway. It passes through the eastern fringe of the Inland Empire metropolitan area, going east from its western terminus at I-15 in Barstow across the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County past the Clipper Mountains to Needles, before it crosses over the Colorado River into Arizona east of Needles. All 155 miles (249 km) of I-40 in California are in San Bernardino County.
The Salmon Site is a 1,470-acre (5.9 km2) tract of land in Lamar County, Mississippi, near Baxterville. The tract is located over a geological formation known as the Tatum Salt Dome and is the location of the only nuclear weapons test detonations known to have been performed in the eastern United States.
Project Oilsand, also known as Project Oilsands, and originally known as Project Cauldron, was a 1958 proposal to exploit the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta via the underground detonation of up to 100 nuclear explosives; hypothetically, the heat and pressure created by an underground detonation would boil the bitumen deposits, reducing their viscosity to the point that standard oilfield techniques could be used.
H. V. Eastman Lake is an artificial lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Madera County, California. A small percentage of the northwest area of the reservoir is in Mariposa County. The lake was named in honor of Judge H. V. Eastman (1891–1972) who had served as Secretary Manager of the Chowchilla Water District.
Project Gasbuggy was an underground nuclear detonation carried out by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on December 10, 1967 in rural northern New Mexico. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a program designed to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosions.
Project Ketch was a 1964 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to use nuclear explosives to excavate a natural gas storage reservoir in Pennsylvania. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects. The project was the only Plowshare project proposed for the northeastern United States.
Project Rufus was a United States nuclear weapons program aimed at investigation and selection of sites within the United States and its possessions that would be suitable for high-yield atmospheric nuclear testing programs. The project's primary purpose was to identify locations where a Minuteman missile silo could be tested under realistic conditions. The project operated under the umbrella of the Vela Uniform research program.
Project Travois was a 1966 U.S. Army Nuclear Cratering Group proposal to use nuclear explosives to develop demonstration projects using nuclear explosives for dam construction. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects. Several sites were considered in California, New Mexico, Idaho, and Oregon. None were pursued beyond studies, and all nuclear quarrying projects were abandoned by the end of 1968.
Project Thunderbird was a 1967 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to use nuclear explosives to prepare coalbeds to gasify coal in place underground in Wyoming. The project was proposed as a component of Project Plowshare, which sought ways to use nuclear devices in public works and industrial development projects. The project aimed to exploit deep coal deposits to gasify them in situ with controlled combustion in the rubble chimney resulting from a deep nuclear detonation. The project was to be located on the border of Johnson County and Campbell County|, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Gillette, Wyoming, in the Powder River Basin.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Beck, Colleen M.; Edwards, Susan R.; King, Maureen L. (September 1, 2011). "Project Ketch". The Off-Site Plowshare and Vela Uniform Programs: Assessing Potential Environmental Liabilities through an Examination of Proposed Nuclear Projects, High Explosive Experiments, and High Explosive Construction Activities (Report). Vol. 2. pp. 4-47–4-48. doi:10.2172/1046575.
- 1 2 Zhang, Sarah (September 23, 2014). "The U.S. once considered using 23 nuclear bombs to blast out a highway". Gizmodo. Retrieved July 29, 2023.
- ↑ Prentice, H.C. (1964). "Application of nuclear explosives for mountain pass highway and railroad". Engineering with Nuclear Explosives: Proceedings of the Third Plowshare Symposium, April 21, 22, 23, 1964. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, Institute for Applied Technology.
- 1 2 3 4 Fry, J.G.; Stane, R.A.; Crutchfield, W.H. Jr. (January 1963). "Preliminary Design Studies in a Nuclear Excavation - Project Carryall" (PDF). Highway Research Record. Highway Research Board, National Academy of Sciences (50): 32–39. Retrieved July 29, 2023.
- ↑ Yoman, John (May 1970). "Summary of Nuclear-Excavation Applications". Symposium on Engineering with Nuclear Explosives (PDF) (Report). pp. 264–265.
- ↑ Project Ketch. Columbia Gas System, United States Atomic Energy Commission, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, and United States Bureau of Mines. July 1967. p. 35.
- ↑ "Barstow-Needles highway realigned for 67 miles". Redlands Daily Facts . April 14, 1973. p. 9. Retrieved August 30, 2023– via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ "Project Carryall". HMdb.org. Retrieved July 29, 2023.