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“A-blasts will mine ore now inaccessible, and recover oil locked in shale. Subterranean atomic bombs will drive electric power plants. Underground reservoirs du

“A-blasts will mine ore now inaccessible, and recover oil locked in shale. Subterranean atomic bombs will drive electric power plants. Underground reservoirs dug with nuclear bombs will make deserts bloom. And the atom’s might power will make child’s play of colossal earth-moving feats, to dig harbors, dredge channels, and build great canals.” This reminds me of the AI/ML hype.

deleted 6y ago
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acidburnNSA 6y ago
Seems like a misinterpretation on the electric power part. Very few power plant designs use atomic power resources explosively to make electricity. They probably just meant undergrounded regular old fission nuclear power plants, which Teller also liked. But maybe not; that's a pretty direct statement. Certainly there were ideas to blow weapons up and then recover energy from the heated walls (often some kind of high heat capacity liquid).
- Someone 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER: “The earliest references to the use of nuclear explosions for power generation date to a meeting called by Edward Teller in 1957. Among the many topics covered, the group considered power generation by exploding 1 Mt bombs in a 1,000-foot (300 m) diameter steam-filled cavity dug in granite. […] A series of 50-kiloton bombs would be dropped into the cavern and exploded to heat the water and create steam. The steam would then power a secondary cooling loop for power extraction using a steam turbine. Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome: “Unlike most nuclear tests, which were focused on weapon development, Shot Gnome was designed to focus on scientific experiments: - "Study the possibility of converting the heat produced by a nuclear explosion into steam for the production of electric power."“
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  You're right that fission power plants don't rely on explosions. However, using hydrogen bombs as a heat source is currently the only method we have for a (man-made) fusion power plant. The economics have never made it worthwhile to attempt (H-bombs are expensive!), but from an engineering perspective it would mostly be a construction project. Hopefully that will change soon, if/when tokamaks, inertial confinement, or some similar technique are able to produce a net gain in power; yet that would require a bunch of basic science problems to be resolved in plasma physics, materials science, etc.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Most of the energy released by the thermonuclear devices we know how to make is from fission.
    - xoa 6y ago
      This is not correct and I'm curious what you're basing it on. The most powerful bomb we ever detonated (Tsar Bomba at 50 Mt) got something on the order of 96-97% of its energy from fusion with its 2-stage test design (tamper replaced with lead). It's true the full power 100 Mt 3-stage with a U-238 tamper would have gotten vastly more from fission (at the cost of terrifying levels of fallout), but it didn't need it. Castle Bravo, the biggest US bomb ever tested, was also heavily fusion (and big thanks to the unexpected lithium 7 tritium bonus), though I think you're right that a lot of ultimate yield was from fission of the natural uranium tamper. It did directly lead to the Mk-21 though, tested in Redwing Navajo at 4.5 Mt and 95% fusion I think? It's true that placing a fusion bomb in a uranium case can massively boost the yield of any single explosive, and in a full fission-fusion-fission design a good half the energy can come from fission. It's not required to work though, a transparent casing can be chosen too, that's the whole concept behind neutron bombs and "low-yield" weapons after all. I'm no expert for sure, this is just my understanding from reading some of the archives and such, so I'd be curious to read any other sources you have.
      - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        >Castle Bravo, the biggest US bomb ever tested, was also heavily fusion (and big thanks to the unexpected lithium 7 tritium bonus), though I think you're right that a lot of ultimate yield was from fission of the natural uranium tamper. It seems to be generally accepted that 10Mt (two thirds) of the yield in Castle Bravo was indeed from fast fission of the tamper.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jowdones 6y ago
I live in Eastern Europe and long time ago, before the Internet and Netflix, I used to go to the library and read books for entertainment. I likes SciFi and at some point I fell on some really weird anthology of Soviet stories from the 50s. I remember one of them was about time relativity, a cosmonaut went with a rocket close to the speed of light and when he came back, on Earth have passed hundreds of years... jolly joy perfect, because in the meantime communism has become a reality. You know, the idea was socialism is temporary and only a stepping stone towards communism. Well that's one story.. another one was about using nuclear blasts to level mountains and transform them into fertile plains for growing crops. That has stuck me as particularly idiotic: what the heck people, what sort of crops? Radioactive ones? They didn't know about radioactivity in the 50s?
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I believe in the 50s it was still thought radioactivity was healthy for you - couldn't find a good thing on it - but I found this from earlier times https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-08/healthy-glow-drink-radiation/ https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-08/healthy-glow-...
  - corty 6y ago
    Radiation isn't totally black and white. One can apparently exert some measure of control over short-term and long-term radiation effects by picking the right bomb (more fusion and higher neutron efficiency means less fallout) and the right surroundings (water dissipates neutrons without activation, thus preventing activation of the surrounding soil). ymmv ;)
  - simonh 6y ago
    Bathe yourself in Dr. Roentgen's invigorating rays! https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-387-49983-3_6.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-387-49...
trianglem 6y ago
Some of these are doable and magical. Project Orion for instance. An actual way to get to a good fraction of the speed of light!
- simonh 6y ago
  I don't know about practical, it has, er, affordability issues.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Fusion bombs are in massive surplus, build your Orion ship now, before prices go higher!
roenxi 6y ago
That actually bodes reasonably well for AI/ML; a lot of these ideas are borderline practical from a cost/benefit perspective. The cheapest way to move dirt in a mining operation is actually to blast it into it its final location with chemical explosives. But it scales poorly with distance and controlling where the dirt moves is an Interesting Technical Challenge.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

acidburnNSA 6y ago

Seems like a misinterpretation on the electric power part. Very few power plant designs use atomic power resources explosively to make electricity. They probably just meant undergrounded regular old fission nuclear power plants, which Teller also liked. But maybe not; that's a pretty direct statement. Certainly there were ideas to blow weapons up and then recover energy from the heated walls (often some kind of high heat capacity liquid).

Someone 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER: “The earliest references to the use of nuclear explosions for power generation date to a meeting called by Edward Teller in 1957. Among the many topics covered, the group considered power generation by exploding 1 Mt bombs in a 1,000-foot (300 m) diameter steam-filled cavity dug in granite. […] A series of 50-kiloton bombs would be dropped into the cavern and exploded to heat the water and create steam. The steam would then power a secondary cooling loop for power extraction using a steam turbine. Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome: “Unlike most nuclear tests, which were focused on weapon development, Shot Gnome was designed to focus on scientific experiments: - "Study the possibility of converting the heat produced by a nuclear explosion into steam for the production of electric power."“
chriswarbo 6y ago
You're right that fission power plants don't rely on explosions. However, using hydrogen bombs as a heat source is currently the only method we have for a (man-made) fusion power plant. The economics have never made it worthwhile to attempt (H-bombs are expensive!), but from an engineering perspective it would mostly be a construction project. Hopefully that will change soon, if/when tokamaks, inertial confinement, or some similar technique are able to produce a net gain in power; yet that would require a bunch of basic science problems to be resolved in plasma physics, materials science, etc.
- dboreham 6y ago
  Most of the energy released by the thermonuclear devices we know how to make is from fission.
  - xoa 6y ago
    This is not correct and I'm curious what you're basing it on. The most powerful bomb we ever detonated (Tsar Bomba at 50 Mt) got something on the order of 96-97% of its energy from fusion with its 2-stage test design (tamper replaced with lead). It's true the full power 100 Mt 3-stage with a U-238 tamper would have gotten vastly more from fission (at the cost of terrifying levels of fallout), but it didn't need it. Castle Bravo, the biggest US bomb ever tested, was also heavily fusion (and big thanks to the unexpected lithium 7 tritium bonus), though I think you're right that a lot of ultimate yield was from fission of the natural uranium tamper. It did directly lead to the Mk-21 though, tested in Redwing Navajo at 4.5 Mt and 95% fusion I think? It's true that placing a fusion bomb in a uranium case can massively boost the yield of any single explosive, and in a full fission-fusion-fission design a good half the energy can come from fission. It's not required to work though, a transparent casing can be chosen too, that's the whole concept behind neutron bombs and "low-yield" weapons after all. I'm no expert for sure, this is just my understanding from reading some of the archives and such, so I'd be curious to read any other sources you have.
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      >Castle Bravo, the biggest US bomb ever tested, was also heavily fusion (and big thanks to the unexpected lithium 7 tritium bonus), though I think you're right that a lot of ultimate yield was from fission of the natural uranium tamper. It seems to be generally accepted that 10Mt (two thirds) of the yield in Castle Bravo was indeed from fast fission of the tamper.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jowdones 6y ago

I live in Eastern Europe and long time ago, before the Internet and Netflix, I used to go to the library and read books for entertainment. I likes SciFi and at some point I fell on some really weird anthology of Soviet stories from the 50s. I remember one of them was about time relativity, a cosmonaut went with a rocket close to the speed of light and when he came back, on Earth have passed hundreds of years... jolly joy perfect, because in the meantime communism has become a reality. You know, the idea was socialism is temporary and only a stepping stone towards communism. Well that's one story.. another one was about using nuclear blasts to level mountains and transform them into fertile plains for growing crops. That has stuck me as particularly idiotic: what the heck people, what sort of crops? Radioactive ones? They didn't know about radioactivity in the 50s?

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I believe in the 50s it was still thought radioactivity was healthy for you - couldn't find a good thing on it - but I found this from earlier times https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-08/healthy-glow-drink-radiation/ https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-08/healthy-glow-...
- corty 6y ago
  Radiation isn't totally black and white. One can apparently exert some measure of control over short-term and long-term radiation effects by picking the right bomb (more fusion and higher neutron efficiency means less fallout) and the right surroundings (water dissipates neutrons without activation, thus preventing activation of the surrounding soil). ymmv ;)
- simonh 6y ago
  Bathe yourself in Dr. Roentgen's invigorating rays! https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-387-49983-3_6.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-387-49...

trianglem 6y ago

Some of these are doable and magical. Project Orion for instance. An actual way to get to a good fraction of the speed of light!

simonh 6y ago
I don't know about practical, it has, er, affordability issues.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Fusion bombs are in massive surplus, build your Orion ship now, before prices go higher!

roenxi 6y ago

That actually bodes reasonably well for AI/ML; a lot of these ideas are borderline practical from a cost/benefit perspective. The cheapest way to move dirt in a mining operation is actually to blast it into it its final location with chemical explosives. But it scales poorly with distance and controlling where the dirt moves is an Interesting Technical Challenge.