Between the fog and the mizzle (misty rain) today, a film noir themed post seemed appropriate. Today, The Weekpublished an article about how during the late 1950s, the United States planned on using nuclear weapons to respond to the stir created by USSR's successful launch of the first satellite, Sputnik. First documented in the biography of the legendary science communicator, Carl Sagan, who was only a graduate student at the time, the project, conceived by physicist Leonard Reiffel, would detonate a nuclear ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) at the edge of the light and dark side of the moon so as to have the greatest psychological effect and global visibility.
The project was scrapped almost as soon as it was put together, and while it may be one of the most ridiculous uses of nuclear weapons ever thought of, it certainly is not the only one. Project Plowshare was the American government's plan starting in the 1950s and ending in the early 1970s to find a "peaceful, non-military use" for nuclear weapons.
While I could go on about the cultural aspects of nuclear science as the technological solution and the economics of making a nuclear weapon, I'll try to stick to the odd ideas the Atomic Energy Commission came up with for peacetime uses of nuclear weapons. Among the more intriguing projects were attempts to fracture rocks for the release of natural gas and oil, as well as leach copper from deposits still in the ground.
Project Chariot Harbor Excavation Plan
Everyone of the Project Plowshare nuclear explosions occurred in either Nevada, Colorado, or New Mexico, with the lion's share happening on the Nevada Test Site. One of the projects that was shelved (mainly because of strong opposition by the public) was Project Chariot, a plan to blast a harbor out near Cape Thompson in Alaska by using around 2.4 Megatons (Megaton = 1,000,000 tons of TNT) worth of nuclear explosives.
Cape Thompson, Alaska
The father of the Hydrogen Bomb, Edward Teller, personally went to Alaska to promote this project, and found a somewhat cool response (heh, Alaska jokes) from the local businesses. At over 300 miles north of the nearest harbor of importance, Nome, a harbor at Cape Thompson would be frozen the majority of the year. Furthermore, the "reason" for blasting out the harbor was to provide access for ships to take coal mined from the Brooks Range hundreds of miles away down to the continental United States. To make matters worse, the site sits less than 200 miles from the Siberian coastline, and as you might imagine, the Russians did not take lightly to Americans using nuclear explosives so near their waters, peaceful intent or not.
Point Hope, Alaska
However, in what quite possibly constitutes the first successful opposition to the federal government's nuclear technology programs, the native Iñupiat people, residing in Point Hope 30 miles to the south, along with the ecologists residing at the University of Alaska, brought enough attention to the potential environmental, health, and social effects of the project that by the time the Atomic Energy Commission realized Cape Thompson was not an ideal site, there was very little chance they would be able to move ahead anyways.
The costs and benefits of defeating this project were mixed; on one hand the Iñupiat people ushered in an new age of Alaskan Native activism that would eventually lead to the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. However, the University of Alaska scientists who opposed the project, William Pruitt and Leslie Viereck, found themselves out of a job and blacklisted from other institutions in the United States. So bad was the experience for Pruitt and his family (his mother was interrogated by the FBI) he moved to Canada in 1965 and did not return to the United States until his friends and colleagues successfully campaigned the University of Alaska to reinstate both him and Leslie Viereck.
The year was 1993.
For more information on Project Chariot and the battle waged against it, see Dan O'Neill's "Alaska and the Firecracker Boys" in Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay's The Atomic West.
I think we went too far. I'm pretty sure that the turnoff for the Grand Canyon was NORTH of the I-40!
Wait...isn't this the old U.S. Highway 666?
I don't care if that sign says 191, were turning around. Now.
Church Rock alongside the U.S. 191 near Monticello, Utah
Okay, now, where were we...First we went to the old nuclear weapons site, Rocky Flats, on the west side of Denver, then to Naturita to hear about their work to preserve the icons of their uranium extraction past, and then on to Moab to see how Moabites are trying to clean up decades of uranium extraction and processing along the Colorado River.
The Orphan Mine Headframe Prior Being Torn Down
A little farther (okay, a few hundred miles farther) down the Colorado River is the icon of the American West, the Grand Canyon. During the Cold War, uranium mining occurred in and around the canyon, and along with the uranium mining on Navajo and Hopi land, left a mixed legacy for uranium extraction in Northern Arizona. In January of this year, the Obama Administration pulled public land around the canyon from use for mineral extraction. Up until this point, the debate over whether or not to mine the land had been ongoing in some form or another since the late 1980s, much to the displeasure of environmental advocacy organizations and mining consortia alike.
Here is a video from Eight, Arizona PBS out of Arizona State University (Go Sun Devils!) discussing the pros and cons of uranium extraction near the Grand Canyon. One important thing to note is that the industry representative, Pam Hill, mentions that she was a former employee of Energy Fuels Nuclear. This is not the same Energy Fuels I mentioned in the Pinon Ridge post, but the two are very closely related.
Of late, The Killers’ newest album, Battle Born, has gotten a lot of playtime on my computer.
One of the things that I like about The Killers is that all of their albums have something to do with the culture and history of the American West. Everything from “Sam’s Town” to “Spaceman” ties into a western theme, be that the dusty western town where nothing happens or alien
abduction. They really have a knack for turning western themes into a piece of art
that people from across the globe can enjoy.
Battle Born is no
exception to The Killers' flair for all things western; the album's name itself comes from the Nevada flag, and
is a reference to the fact Nevada was “born" of the Civil War. After the Civil
War and the transformation of Las Vegas from dusty desert town to “poster town
of Scorn and Ritz,” the testing of nuclear weapons out at the Nevada Test Site (now Nevada National Security Site)
is the most important event in Nevada history. Appropriately enough,
the second single off Battle Born, “Miss Atomic Bomb,” pays homage to this period in time.
“Miss Atomic Bomb,” however, isn’t just a catchy title, it’s
a reference to a woman (really group of women) who between 1953 and 1957 were nicknamed after the atomic tests in various pageants and whatnot. In 1953, during the Upshot-Knothole series of tests at the Nevada Test Site, North Las Vegas hosted their annual beauty pageant
contest. In the subsequent parade, the pageant winner, Paula Harris, rode atop
a float with the theme of a recent spy thriller, “The Atomic City.” As part of
a campaign by North Las Vegas to modernize its' image, the city, and in turn
Paula, took on a “modern” name – “Miss A-Bomb.”
"The Atomic City" Movie Poster (1952)
The most famous of the Miss Atomic Bombs was Lee Merlin,
who, while working for the Sands Hotel in 1957 volunteered for a photo that
would become synonymous with 1950s Las Vegas. Earlier this year, Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Jane Ann
Morrison published an article recounting the story behind the most famous Miss Atomic Bomb:
Credit News Bureau photographer Don English with that idea. He thought
atomic bomb pictures were getting old and was looking for something fresh.
Later, he told Gina Smith, his daughter, that the night before an assignment
with the Sands Copa showgirls, he pasted cotton in the shape of a mushroom
cloud onto cardboard.
After his assignment, he asked the showgirls: "Who wants to
model?" Lee Merlin volunteered, never realizing that would be the shot
published for decades to come around the world. English took her across the street from the Sands, then an empty desert, and
attached the cardboard to her swimsuit.
