A plan to use powerful nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes such as hurricane destruction and canal construction


by

Ed Uthman

On August 26, 2019, President Trump was reported to have proposed to government officials the idea of “blasting hurricanes using nuclear warheads” in 2017. However, President Trump later denied this article on Twitter. Like the idea of President Trump, the United States, the world's largest nuclear weapons country, has long been searching for `` how to use nuclear weapons in a way that is useful for human beings other than war '', Motherboard of overseas media has summarized The

It's Not Just Hurricanes: America Wanted to Nuke Mines, the Moon and the Panama Canal-VICE
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5ymxb/its-not-just-hurricanes-america-wanted-to-nuke-mines-the-moon-and-the-panama-canal


The grand plan of “blowing hurricanes with nuclear weapons” was not the first time President Trump advocated. In 1956, meteorologist Dr. Jack Reid proposed the idea of neutralizing a hurricane with nuclear weapons. This idea was not considered at all at the time, but Dr. Reed republished in 1959 as part of the Project Plowshare, which considers the peaceful use of nuclear weapons.

Popular Science, a science-based media, presents a discussion by Hugh Willaby, a professor at Florida International University and former director of the Hurricane Institute of the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to it, a fully grown hurricane releases up to 20 × 10 13 watts of thermal energy, and the thermal energy released every 20 minutes from the hurricane is equivalent to 10 million tons of nuclear bomb in terms of TNT . The atomic bomb “Little Boy” dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 has a power of approximately 15,000 tons in terms of TNT. Professor Willaby estimates that the hurricane is so powerful that it would not be possible to plan to blow it off with a nuclear bomb.


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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

In Project Plowshare, in addition to blowing out hurricanes, peaceful use of nuclear weapons, such as “Can we use nuclear weapons for mine excavation?” Was being considered. Such a plan did not end with mere desk fiction, but from 1961 to 1973, experiments using a total of 27 nuclear warheads were conducted in New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado in the United States. For example, in the 1983 (PDF file) report by the American Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), `` In order to examine the possibility of converting the heat generated by a nuclear explosion into steam for power generation, a 3.1 kiloton nuclear bomb was It was detonated at the salt mine. '

In order to increase the navigable capacity of the Panama Canal, the United States was planning to expand the Panama Canal. However, large-scale civil engineering works require a large amount of human resources and materials. Therefore, the idea that Project Plowshare 'can efficiently perform the construction of the Panama Canal using nuclear weapons' was included.


by

mi chiel

In addition, the space development competition heated up with the intensification of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the United States proposed “ridiculous use of nuclear weapons”. The top secret project “ Project A119 ”, developed by the US Air Force in 1958, drew the amazing concept of shooting nuclear weapons on the moon.

The purpose of this plan was “to investigate the capabilities of nuclear weapons in the upcoming space war”, but at the same time, “shooting nuclear weapons in a place visible from the Earth's surface to create a mushroom cloud, starting with the Soviet Union” It seems that there was also a meaning of threatening the enemy country.


by Brendan Keene

However, in the 1960s, all plans ended in failure because the threat of nuclear weapons became recognized in the United States and the movement to regulate nuclear power became stronger. Project Plowshare not only did not give very good results, but also because it was unable to solve the problem of the fallout called “death ash”, it was gradually reduced. In addition, Project A119 was canceled in January 1959, saying that it would scare not only the Soviet Union but also the American people.

Dr. Reed, who founded Project Plowshare, continued to insist that it was a good idea to blow hurricanes with nuclear weapons until his death in 2007. However, Motherboard criticized, 'This is a terrible idea,' and 'scientific evidence has shown that nuclear weapons are not only politically wrong, but are also dangerous folly that may eventually destroy humanity. I said.

in Note,   Science, Posted by log1i_yk