All Plowshare experiments made such projects worse than useless, however, by rendering them radioactive. Plowshare’s mission was to use nuclear bomb technology to engineer titanic-scale excavations in the construction of harbors, inter-ocean canals, trans-mountain highways, deep-geologic “repositories” for nuclear waste and natural gas storage. The branch of Atoms for Peace that experimented with nuclear explosives was called Operation Plowshare. “to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.” Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace,” December 8, 1953, United Nations General Assembly, accessed July 26, 2020, “Atoms for Peace Speech,” International Atomic Energy Agency website, accessed July 26, 2020. The peaceful application of nuclear technology would show that Americans could use the power of the atom, as Eisenhower put it: Dwight D. nuclear weapons complex, tarnished by its association with weapons of mass destruction. The Atoms for Peace program was intended to redeem the image of the U.S. The tests were part of the Atoms for Peace Program, initiated by President Eisenhower in 1954 to find peaceful uses for nuclear technologies. Piceance Basin to determine whether nuclear stimulation (nuclear fracking) of oil-shale deposits would be more efficient and commercially viable than conventional chemical explosives or hydraulic fracturing. In 1969 and again in 1973 two nuclear bomb-devices were exploded on Colorado’s The Piceance Basin is a geological formation in Northwest Colorado containing reserves of coal, natural gas, and shale. However, other than Nevada, no other state has had as many nuclear bombs detonated on its soil as Colorado. Initial release September 2021.īackground: “Atoms for Peace” and “Operation Plowshare”When people think of nuclear detonations they think of Nevada or New Mexico. If you would like to contribute materials to the Atlas, please reach out to the editors: Sarah Kanouse (s.kanouse at ) and Shiloh Krupar (srk34 at ).Ĭover Image by Shanna Merola, "An Invisible Yet Highly Energetic Form of Light," from Nuclear Winter.įunded by grants from Georgetown University and Northeastern University. Using the buttons on the left, you may also browse the Atlas's artworks and scholarly essays, access geolocated material on a map, and learn more about contributors to the project. In addition to the stages of the production process, you may view in sequence the positivist, technocratic version of this story, or the often hidden or repressed shadow side to the industrial processing of nuclear materials. These paths roughly track the movement of radioactive materials from the earth, into weapons or energy sources, and then into unmanageable waste-along with the environmental, social, technical, and ethical ramifications of these processes. You may browse the Atlas by following the curated "paths" of information and interpretation provided by the editors.
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