Проект "Chariot": Искусственная гавань в Аляске с помощью ядерных взрывов

Proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska using nuclear devices

Project Chariot was a 1958 United States Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U. S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices. The project originated as part of Operation Plowshare, a research project to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. Substantial local opposition, objections from environmental scientists, and the absence of any credible economic benefit caused the plan to be quietly shelved.

A 1957 meeting at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL) proposed a program to use nuclear explosives for industrial development projects. This proposal became the basis for Project Plowshare, administered by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Chariot was to be the first Plowshare project, and was imagined as a way to show how larger projects, such as a widened Panama Canal, or a sea level Nicaragua Canal, might be accomplished. As the plan developed, nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site indicated that smaller explosions could accomplish much to the publicly stated goals of the project with less risk of radioactive releases or contamination. At the same time, as it became apparent that there could be little economic justification for the project, the program shifted to a more clearly avowed program for testing nuclear excavation in a remote location. Repeated visits to the community by AEC officials failed to sway local and Native residents, who opposed land transfers by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the AEC. Activism opposing the project contributed to Native organization and Native rights activism, which contributed to the establishment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

The project initially envisioned the use of four 100 kiloton devices to excavate a channel, and two one megaton devices to excavate a turning basin, for a total of 2.4 megatons of explosive equivalent, displacing of earth. Later iterations reduced the explosive total to 480 kilotons, and subsequently proposed a 280 kiloton test or demonstration. The latter plan proposed two or three 20 kiloton explosions and two more of approximately 200 kilotons each, for a correspondingly smaller basin. The sites for test boreholes drilled for Project Chariot were remediated in 2014. The five boreholes, drilled in the early 1960s, had used refrigerated diesel fuel as a drilling fluid, contaminating the surrounding area.