Project Chariot

Some visions for using technology in new and different ways turn out to be misguided. A leading example of this is Project Chariot, a plan by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to use nuclear explosions to excavate a harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska, 300 miles north of Nome. The scheme was pushed by physicist Edward Teller, the director of the AEC’s Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (known today as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), beginning in 1958. The proposed harbor was to have an entrance channel 6,000 ft long by 1,200 ft wide, leading to an oval “turning basin” more than a mile by a half mile. It was to be created by detonating four 100-kiloton thermonuclear bombs to excavate the entrance channel, and two 1-megaton bombs to excavate the turning basin. The 2.4-megaton charge would have been 160 times larger than Hiroshima.

Teller issued grants to a group of scientists from the University of Alaska to conduct extensive environmental studies. The AEC downplayed many of the scientists’ negative findings concerning the potential impact of radioactive fallout on plant and animal life, and the local Eskimos hunting activities, and dragged out the publication of the final report for several years. Three of the scientists lost their jobs. But several of the scientists shared their concerns with Barry Commoner, an early leader of the environmental movement, who was able to disseminate their concerns within the scientific community.