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US 1963 plan to create a canal through Israel using 520 nuclear bombs
- kristopolous 6y agoThey left out a big detail, the partial test ban treaty of 1963 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Tre... 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"
- VectorLock 6y agoIts not a test, its a practical application! Would the PNTBT have even mattered? According to wikipedia it banned all tests except those underground - which arguably this excavation would have been.
- kristopolous 6y agoSure. Both the USSR and the USA had "peaceful" nuclear programs until the 1996 PNE treaty, which banned those as well and was also when this canal project was declassified. Apparently calling something "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy" was fooling nobody. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy 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 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.
- VectorLock 6y agoPresumably the nuclear explosives are a bit less suspect when not attached to missiles or other launch devices. I guess Israel is in striking distance of Moscow.
- kristopolous 6y agoOpening scene: American diplomat explaining worksite to UN inspectors, 1963: "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."
- wahern 6y agoThe Cuban Missile Crisis precipitated a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear ballistic missiles from Turkey, but the U.S. kept its nuclear gravity bombs at Incirlik Air Base, which remain there today.[1] I don't think storing nuclear bombs in Israel would have been considered a substantial change in posture considering that Turkey, unlike Israel, actually bordered the Soviet Union. [1] See, e.g., https://cissm.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Nuclear_Bargain_TR_TNW%20-%20Goren.pdf https://cissm.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Nuclear_Ba... page 36, "Turkey has, without interruption, hosted American nuclear weapons since 1959"
- 55555 6y agoHow much time and money would this cost compared to more conventional methods of trench digging?
- bohemian99 6y agoIt's hard to measure the long term financial impact of irradiated soil
- runjake 6y agoFrom the article, halfway down: "Conventional methods of excavation would be "prohibitively expensive," the memo said." So, sufficiently astronomical enough.
- sickofparadox 6y agoI feel like the economic benefits of not detonating a little over a gigaton of nuclear explosives in your country outweighs the benefits of having a (highly irradiated) competitor to the Suez Canal. Would you even be able to move food through this proposed canal safely?
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoNukes could be used safely. The opposition to them is political. The USSR had created 'clean' nukes with fewer byproducts. Three nukes were used to create this canal in 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pechora%E2%80%93Kama_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pechora%E2%80%93Kama_Canal And today the radioactivity is essentially negligible.
- temp0826 6y agoI’m curious how these clean bombs differ from neutron bombs (which I thought had a point of minimizing leftovers by using everything up in the neutron blast)?
- maxerickson 6y agoMaximizing the ratio of yield to contamination instead of the ratio of neutron radiation to contamination.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toss1 6y agoFor food, the lingering radiation might even be considered a feature not a bug. 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-irradiation-what-you-need-know https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra... [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/irradiation-food-packaging/overview-irradiation-food-and-packaging https://www.fda.gov/food/irradiation-food-packaging/overview...
- zbrozek 6y agoAs a kid playing Alpha Centauri, I used to use the planet buster weapons for the same purpose.
- starik36 6y agoI don't think Lando would be happy with you.
- herodoturtle 6y agoNorri S
- option 6y agocertain types of bomb (thermonuclear kind) does not leave detectable radiation pollution aren’t they?
- rsynnott 6y agoThermonuclear bombs are cleaner per kt than conventional fission bombs, but still quite dirty.
- derekp7 6y agoI believe that is because they require a fission component in order to set of the fusion component. If they could obtain fusion without the fission detonator, it would be clean from what I've read.
- adrian_b 6y agoWithout the fission component they would be cleaner, but not clean. 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.
- rsynnott 6y agoThe Soviets actually got around to trying this. It didn't work very well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagan_(nuclear_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagan_(nuclear_test)
- thescriptkiddie 6y agoIt seems to have worked pretty well aside from the obvious radioactive fallout problem. They successfully turned a dry river bed into a lake that still exists today.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI'm having trouble find definitive information about what the level of radiation is at the lake today. Does anyone know?
- opwieurposiu 6y agoThe Pechora–Kama Canal test used three "clean" nukes and today the dose measures between 9 and 70 μSv [micro-Sieverts] per week. This is about the same as the local natural background dose. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265931X11003043?via%3Dihub 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. https://www.epa.gov/radiation/calculate-your-radiation-dose https://www.epa.gov/radiation/calculate-your-radiation-dose
- captaincole 6y agoFrom the wikipedia article on the tiaga bombs. > "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
- siffland 6y agoHindsight is always 20/20, we all know now that it would of been a bad idea. I do think this, along with Project Orion, are great thinking by people to utilize terribly destructive weapons for outside the box peaceful solutions. 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.
- 1996 6y ago> we all know now that it would of been a bad idea No we don't.
- justin66 6y agoIt'd be interesting to know roughly how much energy it'd take - and thereby how much uranium it would take - to simply build a lot of electrically-powered heavy equipment and dig the same, hypothesized canal using nuclear power. 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...
- bluGill 6y agoYou also need to figure out how to get power to the machines. I'm imagining a canal dug by excavators on centenary like electric trains (but higher). When done leave the wires in place and make ships turn off the engines for electric power.
- aww_dang 6y agoAlternatively the power could be used in an industrial park, inland harbor and aluminum smelter.
- mschuster91 6y agoWhy so complex? Just hook your diggers up to the nearest high-voltage distribution line, similar to how the Bagger 288 operates (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288) and feed the grid with a nuclear plant. 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.
- fmajid 6y agoRichard Feynman has anecdotes on how the AEC was soliciting cockamamie ideas for applications of nuclear explosives to civil engineering to patent at Los Alamos. They weren't very serious, although.
- Apocryphon 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119 "Gotta nuke something" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IUxK_0WLbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IUxK_0WLbg
- rektide 6y ago1958 Project Chariot[1] proposed creating a new bay in Alaska by use of nukes. 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. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot
- CobsterLock 6y agoI took Professor Wellerstein's class it was super interesting. For my final project I researched some of the peaceful nuke ideas, and this Israeli canal was discussed in that class. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat... [3]: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ [4]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- mannykannot 6y agoI would think this canal would pose quite a threat to the region’s aquifers, just from the presence of seawater, regardless of any radioactive pollution. The mountain aquifer extends south to Be’er Sheva, close to the route shown here.