nuclear-news

VIDEO USA’s Atomic Energy Commission’s pointless efforts at “peaceful bombs”

in the least productive but most destructive test, the scientists wanted “to see how big of a hole a nuclear bomb could make.” Motherboard:

“It proved to be a really big hole.”

That test, Project Sedan, spewed radioactive fallout across four states, contaminating “more Americans than any other nuclear test.”

VIDEO The U.S. Once Wanted To Use Nuclear Bombs as a Construction Tool : http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/01/the-u-s-once-wanted-to-use-nuclear-bombs-as-a-construction-tool/#ixzz2IFsWdcSf  Smithsonian. January 16, 2013  In 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission wanted to see how big of a hole they could make with a nuclear bomb. ……..Enter, Project Sedan.  the U.S.’s Atomic Energy Commission, Project Plowshare, says Motherboard, was a project in which the nation’s scientists were supposed to find something useful to do with all the nuclear expertise they had acquired throughout World War II and its aftermath. From 1961 through 1973, Project Plowshare saw 27 nuclear detonations. Many of these were at a test site in Nevada, says Motherboard, but some were a bit more experimental. In 1973, Project Rio Blanco, an operation under the banner of Project Plowshare,

“was an attempt to release 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under the Rocky Mountains by blasting apart caverns more than a mile deep with a trio of 33-kiloton bombs. It was the final of three attempts by Plowshare researchers to create what basically amounted to nuclear fracking.”

The project team wanted to blow a path for a railway line through California’s Bristol Mountains; they wanted to use nukes to expand the Panama Canal; and they wanted to use underwater explosions to carve out a harbor in Alaska.

Plowshare’s first act was Project Gnome. In 1961, “the U.S. went ahead with Gnome, burying a 3.1 kiloton device over 1,100 feet deep in a massive salt deposit below New Mexico.” The goal was to see if underground nuclear explosions could be used to generated electricity. The result was to vent radioactive material to the atmosphere.

And, in the least productive but most destructive test, the scientists wanted “to see how big of a hole a nuclear bomb could make.” Motherboard:

“It proved to be a really big hole.”

That test, Project Sedan, spewed radioactive fallout across four states, contaminating “more Americans than any other nuclear test.”

Such a foolhardy project continued for so long, says Motherboard, in part because the public’s knowledge of the dangers of nuclear testing wasn’t quite keeping pace with the visions scientists had for the bombs’ uses. Eventually, though, the public caught on. In 1977, decades after it started and “amidst public uproar,” Project Plowshare was shut down.
 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/01/the-u-s-once-wanted-to-use-nuclear-bombs-as-a-construction-tool/#ixzz2IFsCrqMK

January 17, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Resources -audiovicual, USA