US 1963 plan to create a canal through Israel using 520 nuclear bombs
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
The US had an entire program dedicated to a bunch of different applications of nuclear bombs that were not blowing up cities called Project Plowshare[1]. Some of the proposed ideas were the above second canal, another was a type of "fracking" to release natural gas, yet another was a way to create a new protected port (for military purposes)
there was also a similar program in the USSR called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy [2]. They had similar ideas, but the big achievement was closing two oil wells that could not be conventionally capped. so they detonated nuclear bombs adjacent to the well which physically blocked the well.
I would highly recommend checking out Wellerstein's blog [3]. tons of cool write ups about different aspects of nuclear technology and their history. Another fun thing he made, the Nuke Map [4]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat... [3]: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ [4]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
This was seen as a possible way around it.
"No no we're not violating the test ban treaty, we're just digging a canal 1,000 miles from the Warsaw line with nuclear weapons. You know, international trade and all. Nothing to see here, move along"
Would the PNTBT have even mattered? According to wikipedia it banned all tests except those underground - which arguably this excavation would have been.
Apparently calling something "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy" was fooling nobody. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_N....
The US, having a different style of humor, used the totally innocent sounding "Project Plowshares". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
Could you imagine someone taking these programs exclusively on good faith? "I don't see how placing hundreds of warheads near Moscow could possibly be related to first strike strategies. This all looks perfectly normal. Israel isn't America's Cuba in cold war politics, what kind of crisis could possibly arise from the placement of these warheads?"
Some day our ancestors will find all this cold war stuff hilarious.
I guess Israel is in striking distance of Moscow.
"You see, the 500 bomb stockpile is over here and the fleet of supply planes is way over there!
We'd have to carry say this entire bomb All The Way over into that plane. Do you know how heavy that thing is?
Besides, when has America dropped an atomic weapon on a city say within the past decade and a half? Right...
These outlandish conspiracy theories; they hurt, they really do."
[1] See, e.g., https://cissm.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Nuclear_Ba... page 36, "Turkey has, without interruption, hosted American nuclear weapons since 1959"
I very strongly suspect it would take vastly less uranium to just dig the canal normally, and the uranium certainly wouldn't have to be as highly enriched, and it could be reprocessed rather than thrown up in the atmosphere...
For what it's worth, even this massive beast, one of the world's largest man made machines, uses "only" 16 MW of electrical power, about twice the power a high-speed ICE 3 train needs.
It didn't work very well.
This is about the same as the local natural background dose.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02659...
You can estimate your personal yearly dose with this calculator, though for me it only works in firefox.
> "the current external γ-ray dose rate to a human from the contaminations associated with the 'Taiga' experiment was between 9 and 70 μSv [micro-Sieverts] per week". The report also recommends periodic monitoring of the site was recommended. In comparison, typical exposure from naturally occurring background radiation is about 3mSv per year, or 57μSv per week
S
"Gotta nuke something"
Originated out of Project Plowshare, an attempt to find peaceful use of nukes. Like trying to dig up oil/natural gas, for example! Unlike USSR, the US did not focus on radioactively safer fission-only reaction devices, and generally caused a ruckus. Terminated 1977.
Three nukes were used to create this canal in 1970:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pechora%E2%80%93Kama_Canal
And today the radioactivity is essentially negligible.
Irradiation of food is a useful method of preservation which extends safety and shelf life and does not make foods radioactive or noticeably change the taste texture or appearance... [0][1]
Whether the lingering radiation would create a sufficient dose, and sufficiently consistent and accurate, for the desired preservative effect is another question. But, it might be an advantage that could plausibly support an upcharge for transport of foods (tho perhaps require lead-lined crew quarters), or a preferred route vs non-irradiating Suez canal?
I have no idea if the scale of radiation is anywhere close enough for this to be anything but a joke of a sidetrack, but I don't think the food transport would be harmed... the crew, another story.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra... [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/irradiation-food-packaging/overview...
Yes because that’s not how radiation works. It doesn’t transfer. In fact food is regularly irradiated.
It might not be good for the crews though, and the radiation would eventually flow out to sea and infect our food supply.
So, sufficiently astronomical enough.
All the existing thermonuclear bombs use fusion reactions between various isotopes of hydrogen and lithium and all those reactions produce an intense flux of neutrons, which will generate large quantities of radioactive isotopes in the surrounding environment.
The same problem of the neutrons exist with most projects of getting energy from fusion, which also produce radioactive waste, even if less than fission reactors.
Again we know now this would be bad and the consequences would not outweigh the benefits. I do think it is vital to have this kind of thinking (I mean outside the box). I think some people may find it crazy that this was even thought of, however I find is an interesting read.
No we don't.