Project Plowshare: Nukes for Peace!
I’d vaguely heard of Project Plowshare but good god, what a ridiculous and dangerous waste of time and money.
At the height of the Cold War, nuclear weapons were seen not only as devices of destruction, but also as tools for progress. Project Plowshare was a bold attempt to use atomic explosions for more practical purposes: from digging canals and creating harbors to reshaping entire landscapes. This project was designed to push the limits of what seemed possible, but instead turned into an environmental disaster.
This reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when Homer buys a gun and uses it around the house for everything, like changing the TV channel and opening beer cans. If the only tool you have is a hammer…
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The sheer ridiculousness of Project Plowshare is one of my favorite historical topics to expound on, enough so that I drew an entire comic about the AEC’s two poorly thought-out Plowshare tests in Colorado. Yes, you can use nukes to frack for natural gas, but maybe you shouldn’t….
Not be confused with Project Ploughshares , a Canadian non-government organization which works to advance policies and actions to prevent war and armed violence and build peace. https://ploughshares.ca/
Thank you for posting that because I was like, "wait - wasn't that plural and spelled differently....and WTF?! THAT is not what I thought they did."
I thought Plowshare was covered in either Trinity and Beyond or Welcome to Ground Zero, two documentaries about (primarily) us nuclear testing. I don't see it listed in the descriptions for either I've read through, so I may be confusing it with *Gas Buggy* which was a similarly conceived idea that worked great except for (of course) making the natural gas radioactive.
Project Gasbuggy was part of Project Plowshare - it was the first natural gas stimulation test, followed by the Rulison and Rio Blanco tests…
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