Well, the Panama canal could have been at sea level, easy to traverse without the shenanigans, and with some of the wealth it generates flowing to the Panamanians. But then the CIA killed Omar Torrijos.
From a technical perspective, PNE's have been proposed to excavate a sea level canal, it would take much less than 10 years.
Personally I consider a few Archimedes screws and minimal works to the locks much less invasive than PNE's,... but if your argument is that taste can not be argued I can only agree at a fundamental level...
> The collection of data was substantially completed on Route 17 in Panama one of the routes considered for nuclear excavations... The Atomic Energy Commission has recently conducted the first two of the planned series of nuclear excavation experiments designed to determine the feasibility of nuclear excavation of a sea level canal.
https://www.congress.gov/90/crecb/1968/09/05/GPO-CRECB-1968-...