The Most Insane Megaproject You Never Heard About

TL;DR

Project Plowshare was the US government's two-decade Cold War program to use thermonuclear bombs for civilian engineering, driven by physicist Edward Teller.

Key Points

• 1.Edward Teller conceived Project Plowshare as 'nukes for peace.' The Hungarian Manhattan Project physicist who developed the H-bomb proposed using thermonuclear explosions for excavation, canal-building, and mining — partly as cover to keep testing nuclear weapons while public opposition to the arms race grew.
• 2.The 1961 New Mexico debut was an immediate disaster. A 3,100-tonne TNT-equivalent bomb buried 360 meters in a salt deposit was meant to create a geothermal energy pond, but unexpected water in the salt caused a superheated steam explosion that erupted radioactive fallout, bathing spectators in a 'strangely itchy sauna.'
• 3.The 1962 Nevada test created the largest artificial crater in US history but spread radioactive fallout across multiple states. The blast displaced 12 million tonnes of soil forming a crater 100 meters deep and 400 meters wide, but a miscalculated burial depth sent radioactivity as far as South Dakota and Illinois, with radioactive iodine found in Utah milk.
• 4.The crown jewel was a 'Pan-Atomic Canal' requiring 250 bombs equal to 8,000 Hiroshimas. Route 17 through Panama's jungle was the top contender — 80 km long, requiring evacuation of 43,000 people across 17,000 square kilometers, with shockwaves predicted to shatter windows in Costa Rica and Colombia.
• 5.Project Plowshare was cancelled in 1977 after 20 years and dozens of detonations without achieving a single goal. Nuclear fracking only produced ultra-expensive radioactive gas no one could sell; no canal, harbor, or tunnel was ever built, and the Pan-Atomic Canal was officially killed by a 1970 report.