Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/or Ruin Everything
by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith · 16 Oct 2017 · 398pp · 105,032 words
the same, in this age of relatively expensive energy, we may not be able to see what wonders are over the horizon. Nota Bene on Project Plowshare It’s southeastern New Mexico, 1961. Dry, flat land with scattered scrubby plants. A place that has seen few humans over the past millennium is
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theory, you can use that heat to make steam, drive turbines, and run your toaster. As in previous explosions under what came to be called Project Plowshare, this one produced an impressive shock wave and shook the dust from the desert ground. Then things got weird. When nuclear bombs are going off
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detectors off-line. As far as your authors know, this is the only known gopher-related nuclear accident, but it is nevertheless illustrative of why Project Plowshare never quite got off the ground. In theory, it was a beautiful idea: There are all sorts of uses to which massive, cheap explosions could
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future nuclear vehicle.* The jury was still out on just how dangerous atmospheric radiation was. Thoughts like these led to what came to be called Project Plowshare. Between 1961 and 1973, under this program the United States conducted thirty-five individual nuclear detonations as part of twenty-seven tests. Each explosion had
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these blasts was one of resentment by local people, many of them indigenous Americans, who were treated callously. The scientists and bureaucrats in charge of Project Plowshare repeatedly ignored local concerns, underestimated the damage they would cause, and overestimated their ability to deliver a cheap nuclear blast. The silver lining to the
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. This finding partly motivated the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) between the United States and the USSR. This treaty probably posed the greatest obstacle to Project Plowshare, because one of the LTBT’s rules was that you could detonate bombs in your country, but the effects of the bomb couldn’t leave
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represent a great cost savings, Americans decided that atomic weapons would be better left on the shelf for use in case of apocalypse. Thus ended Project Plowshare. In case you’re wondering, the Soviet Union had a comparable program, called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, which lasted right up until that
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, K., Nettle, D., and Smulders, T. V. “Water-Induced Finger Wrinkles Improve Handling of Wet Objects.” Biology Letters 9, no. 2 (2013):20120999. Kaufman, Scott. Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012. Kharecha, P. A., and Hansen, J. E. “Prevented
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_crafting.html. Kipper, Greg, and Rampolla, Joseph. Augmented Reality: An Emerging Technologies Guide to AR. Amsterdam and Boston, Mass.: Syngress, 2012. Kirsch, Scott. Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Kolarevic, Branko, and Parlac, Vera. Building Dynamics: Exploring Architecture of
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and, 109–11 see also robots programmed materials, 103–5 Project Babylon, 48–49 Project Esper, 185 Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project), 47, 48 Project Plowshare, 96–100 Project Rulison, 98 Promobot, 129 Promobot IR77, 129 propellants, 14–15, 18, 20, 23 prostate cancers, 239n, 247 prosthetics, advanced, 322–24 proteins
Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military
by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang · 10 Sep 2018 · 745pp · 207,187 words
spoke hopefully about . . . using peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) ‘to increase man’s control over the environment,’ just as in the United States where plans for ‘Project Plowshares’ included nuclear detonations for a plowshare harbor at Ogoturuk, Alaska, and for the ‘Panatomic Canal’ at the Panamanian isthmus” (306). Josephson quotes the overblown claims
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1950s Plan to Use H-bombs to Make Roads and Redirect Rivers,” Slate, Sept. 30, 2015, www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/09/project_plowshare_the_1950s_plan_to_use_nukes_to_make_roads_and_redirect.html (accessed Apr. 25, 2017). 134.Doel and Harper, “Prometheus Unleashed,” 66–85. Also
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complex, 26, 161, 404 military space budget, 282 military space efforts, 273–74, 278–79 moratorium on nuclear testing, 307 presidential exit speech, 26, 161 Project Plowshare, 287, 499n proposed ban on weapons in space, 281 quest for both peace and preparedness, 275–78, 493–94n satellite proposals, 267, 271, 488n, 491n
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(“Britannia”), 71 Price, Stephan, 222, 223 prime meridian, 87, 89, 98–99 printing press invention, 442n Project Defender, 181, 271, 278 Project Excalibur, 246, 252 Project Plowshare, 287, 499n Project RAND, 192, 262 see also RAND Corporation Project Vanguard, 237, 267–68, 270, 488n, 489n, 490n protoplanets, 384, 385 Ptolemy, Claudius Almagest
On Thermonuclear War
by Herman Kahn · 16 Jul 2007 · 1,117pp · 270,127 words
to control the diffusion of weapons over the next 50 years by the kinds of social, legal, and political barriers which have been erected against Project Plowshare, and which are likely to be erected by normal negotiations, such barriers can effect 5-, 10-, and 20-year delays. It is simply my judgment
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. The Argus effect that has been receiving much prominence at this writing is an example of a current ability at a kind of weather control. Project Plowshare has made some systematic studies on the use of nuclear explosives to modify both weather and climate. In the fifth volume of the Proceedings of
As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age
by Matthew Cobb · 15 Nov 2022 · 772pp · 150,109 words
mean that the threat of fallout went away. In the United States there were repeated attempts to develop the peaceful use of nuclear weapons through Project Plowshare, in which nuclear bombs would gouge out new harbours in Alaska and Australia or even blast a new sea-level Panama Canal that would directly
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required anywhere between 185 and 925 explosions, depending on the route).13 Devised by Manhattan Project veteran and ‘father of the hydrogen bomb’ Edward Teller, Project Plowshare carried out twenty-seven test detonations between 1957 and 1973 (it was finally defunded in 1975), leaving 100-metre-deep craters and ejecting debris nearly
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pursued similar alarming themes. Science and Survival, published in 1966 by cell biologist Barry Commoner, who had played a key role in the opposition to Project Plowshare, helped to lay the basis for the US environmentalist movement, with its critique of industrial and technological development, frequently spiced with urban fantasies about the
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the Military, 1945–1975 (Princeton, Princeton University Press). 12 Ezrahi, Y., et al. (eds) (1994), Technology, Pessimism and Postmodernism (Dordrecht, Springer). 13 For details of Project Plowshare, see for example: O’Neill, D. (1994), The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos and the Roots of the Environmental Movement (New York, Basic Books
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) and Kaufmann, S. (2013), Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America (London, Cornell University Press). 14 Frum, D. (2000), How We Got Here. The 70s: The
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
by Annie Jacobsen · 16 May 2011 · 572pp · 179,024 words
Canal or blowing up America’s natural geography to make room for future highways and homes. These proposed earthmoving projects fell under the rubric of Project Plowshares, a name chosen from a verse in the Old Testament, Micah 4:3: And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife · 27 Oct 2009 · 356pp · 95,647 words
Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Introduction CHAPTER 1 - THE SWORD OF MICHAEL CHAPTER 2 - THE VALLEY OF IRON CHAPTER 3 - PROJECT PLOWSHARE AND THE SUNSHINE UNITS CHAPTER 4 - KINKS, INSTABILITIES, AND BALONEY BOMBS CHAPTER 5 - HEAT AND LIGHT CHAPTER 6 - THE COLD SHOULDER CHAPTER 7 - SECRETS CHAPTER
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. They had figured out how to use that energy for war. It would be much, much harder to harness that energy for peace. CHAPTER 3 PROJECT PLOWSHARE AND THE SUNSHINE UNITS I’ve felt it myself, the glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist
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harness the power of fusion. An equivalent program was already under way in the United States. A few years earlier, American scientists began work on Project Plowshare and started drawing up plans to use nuclear weapons to create an artificial harbor in Alaska, widen the Panama Canal, and dig a second Suez
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canal through Israel’s Negev desert. Project Plowshare and Program No. 7 were crude attempts to harness the power of fusion. Researchers quickly reasoned that if humans could learn to control the power
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sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Brown—and Teller—turned Rabi’s irony into pure optimism, and embraced Isaiah’s vision. Project Plowshare was born. Fusion power, even in a vessel as crude as a hydrogen bomb, could make the world a better place. The Livermore scientists quickly
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, much less following Russia’s lead and banning tests entirely, would prevent the development of antimissile warheads. Then he stressed that a moratorium would damage Project Plowshare, his program for peaceful nuclear bombs. Despite Teller’s arguments, the pressure was too great for the administration to resist. The United States would follow
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the cloud of radiation drifting over Japan, they had little idea that it was the first test of Project No. 7, the Soviet answer to Project Plowshare.29 A Sedan-like explosion, 140 kilotons’ worth, carved the crater that became Lake Chagan.The radiation that was released by the blast violated the
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not exactly maintaining the peace. Despite all the effort and money poured into peaceful fusion explosions, the United States never got any nonmilitary benefit from Project Plowshare. No gigantic earth-moving projects ever materialized; neither the Alaska harbor nor the second Panama canal ever got beyond the planning phase. (President Nixon formally
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out of the wells. Unfortunately, the gas was radioactive, and no utility would buy it. After twelve years of trying and twenty-seven nuclear tests, Project Plowshare sputtered to a halt without ever having proved the usefulness of peaceful nuclear bombs. Thirty years after Teller first dreamed of liberating the power of
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the sun upon the Earth, Project Plowshare was dead. Even the discovery of oil in Alaska in the late 1960s didn’t make his proposal of a bomb-carved harbor any more
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his quest for nuclear supremacy. Treaties with the Soviet Union were signs of weakness; detente and peacemaking would just lead to the destruction of America. Project Plowshare was a lie; to Teller, it was not a tool of peace but a means to undermine treaties with the Soviet Union. Teller was a
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in the interest of peace,” said Isidor Rabi. “I think he is the enemy of humanity.” Project No. 7 had a little more success than Project Plowshare. After the creation of Lake Chagan, the Soviets briefly experimented with nuclear excavations of lakes and dams, but the results were disappointing. The Russian efforts
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,’” 524-25. 55 As early as 1949, scientists realized Reines and Suydam, Preliminary Survey of Physical Effects Produced by a Super Bomb, 910. CHAPTER 3: PROJECT PLOWSHARE AND THE SUNSHINE UNITS 58 “An underground explosion was indeed carried out” U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968
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Era.” Ca. 2003. www.jet.efda.org/documents/articles/samm.pdf (accessed 26 July 2007). Sanders, Ralph. “Defense of Project Plowshare.” Technology and Culture 4 (Spring 1963): 252-55. Sandia National Laboratories. “Project Plowshare.” Poster. www.sandia.gov/recordsmgmt/exhibits/PlowshareProgram.pdf (accessed 25 July 2007). ———. “Rapid-Fire Pulse Brings Sandia Z Method Closer
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. Operation Ivy, 1952. DNA 6036F. December 1982. ———, Defense Nuclear Agency. Plumbbob Series, 1957. DNA 6005F. September 1981. ———, Defense Nuclear Agency. Projects Gnome and Sedan—The Plowshare Program. DNA 6029F. March 1983. ———, Defense Nuclear Agency. Safety Experiments, November 1955-March 1958. DNA 6030F. August 1982. ———, Defense Nuclear Agency. Shot Apple2—A Test of
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creation of moratoriums on natural gas tests of Nougat tests of in Operation Storax Plumbbob Rainier test of in Program No. in Project Chariot in Project Plowshare n radioactive fallout from in Soviet Union n Fusion Energy Foundationn Gai, Moshe gamma rays Gamow, George Garwin, Richard gas, natural gasses General Advisory Committee
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M. Nova Nuckolls, John Nuclear Engineering and Design nuclear fallout nuclear fission, see fission nuclear fusion, see fusion nuclear power, peaceful uses of Program No. Project Plowshare n nuclear reactors nuclear weapons aging of Dyson on moratoriums on National Ignition Facility and Reliable Replacement Warhead Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator n stockpile stewardship
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machines Platt, Charles plutoniumn polywater Ponomarev, Leonid Pons, Stanley President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Princeton University Program No. Project Chariot Project Plowshare n Project Sherwood proton-proton chain protons strong force and pulsars Purdue University Putterman, Seth fusion device of Rabi, Isidor radiation radioactivity fallout radium radon
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a target capsule, causing them to evaporate. This pushes the rest of the capsule inward and ignites the fuel. 48 Nuckolls had been involved in Project Plowshare. In the late 1950s, he designed a fusion power plant that heated steam by means of hydrogen bombs. 49 Other labs, such as Los Alamos
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Mar 2009 · 1,037pp · 294,916 words
Huntley’s thrilled commentary. Casinos scheduled outings to watch tests at the Atomic Energy Commission Proving Grounds northwest of Las Vegas. The AEC’s propagandistic “Project Plowshare” produced glowing stories of the possibilities of using nuclear devices to carve a new canal in Central America and a new harbor in Alaska. The
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, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27-28. For airborne test broadcast, see ibid., 91. For Project Plowshare, see Dan O’Neill, The Firecracker Boys (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). 231 For public awareness of nuclear fallout, see Winkler, Life Under
The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold · 7 Apr 2014 · 423pp · 118,002 words
—to discuss peaceful uses of nuclear power. Teller suggested it could be used for mining and excavation. The US Atomic Energy Commission agreed and created Project Plowshare, named after the biblical verse from the book of Isaiah: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” The
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technical program—political, sociological, and psychological considerations—were not matters of AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] concern,” notes The Nuclear Impact: A Case Study of the Plowshare Program to Produce Gas by Underground Stimulation in the Rocky Mountains, a 1976 book about the program written by Frank Kreith and Catherine B. Wrenn. This
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support for “nuclear stimulation experiments which seek to produce natural gas from tight geologic formations which cannot presently be utilized.” With backing from the top, Project Plowshare and its industry allies upped the ante. The next test would explode three nuclear bombs simultaneously—each one larger than the bomb used for Gasbuggy
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legacy of the blast is an official plaque at ground zero warning against digging the soil or drilling down without permission from the government. Undaunted, Project Plowshare planners kept getting more ambitious. The next test, called Project Wagon Wheel, involved five hundred-kiloton devices. And this array was just the beginning. If
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. Hydraulic Fracturing. New York: Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, 1970. Kreith, Frank, and Catherine B. Wrenn. The Nuclear Impact: A Case Study of the Plowshare Program to Produce Gas by Underground Nuclear Stimulation in the Rocky Mountains. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976. Lederer, Adam. “Using Public Policy Models to Evaluate Nuclear
Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers
by Stephen Graham · 8 Nov 2016 · 519pp · 136,708 words
, ‘Politics of Verticality’. 30See Chiara De Cesari, ‘Hebron, or Heritage as Technology of Life’, Jerusalem Quarterly 41, 2010, pp. 6–28. 31Scott Kirsch, Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving, New York: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 32See Brian Hudson, Cities on the Shore: The Urban Littoral Frontier, London
The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet
by Arthur Turrell · 2 Aug 2021 · 297pp · 84,447 words
Sticking a fusion reactor on a spacecraft is, surprisingly, not the only fusion-spacecraft option out there. Project Orion was part of Edward Teller’s “Plowshare” program to turn nuclear weapons to peaceful purposesII and was co-led by physicist Freeman Dyson.13 It looked at chucking exploding hydrogen bombs out of
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, 190–91 nuclear fission and potential for proliferation of, 40, 167 nuclear fusion power plants and potential for creation of, 42, 166–67 Teller’s “Plowshare” program for, 214 oil. See also fossil fuels energy security and access to, 42–43 number of years left for supply of, if used exclusively, 43
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density and, 68, 69 energy release in nuclear reactions and, 65–66 need for more research on, 66–69 temperature and, 64–65, 68, 69 “Plowshare” program, 214 population growth, and energy consumption, 29–30 Post, Richard, 11 power plants DEMO plans for, 197, 198, 199, 206 LIFE prototype for, 199, 206
The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
by Craig Nelson · 25 Mar 2014 · 684pp · 188,584 words
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
by Laurie Garrett · 15 Feb 2000