Educational Media Reviews Online

Between 1958 and 1988, more than 150 nuclear blasts were carried out by the United States and the Soviet Union for “peaceful uses.” The purpose of these blasts was geographical engineering, reconfiguring the landscape to suit the needs of business and government. Nuclear Dynamite explores this interesting sidelight to the nuclear power debate, combining interviews with scientists with archival footage from U.S. and Soviet government sources.

The incredible power unleashed by the atomic bomb, and the even more powerful hydrogen bomb, fired the imagination of many in science and government during the 1950s. Among the ideas for using nuclear explosions as a kind of super-dynamite were: digging a tunnel for New York City, melting oil out of the Athabascan tar sands in Canada, dispersing smog in Los Angeles through the heat of an explosion, blasting a channel to create a second Panama Canal, and powering a rocket ship to Mars. Plans for the latter two were actually drawn up and studies made to prepare for implementation as part of Project Plowshare, a U.S. government program headed by Edward Teller, the co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb.

The Soviet Union also made a major investment in “peaceful uses” research. One of its early successes was in using a nuclear explosion to put out a gas well fire that had been burning for over two years. A not-so-successful project was the attempt to divert a river in Siberia to help fill the Caspian Sea. The pulverized soft rock caused by the explosion created a shallow, muddy lake, and the radioactive fallout spread to Europe and North America.

Concerns about fallout helped to doom the ambitious Panama and Mars projects of the U.S. Barry Commoner made a study of children’s teeth to show that radioactive strontium-90 was getting into the food chain. Grass contaminated by fallout was eaten by cows. The cows’ milk was then consumed by children and the strontium absorbed into their bodies. A test ban treaty was signed that banned above-ground nuclear explosions. All work on Project Plowshare was stopped in 1974. The Soviet Union continued with its projects until the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986 awakened an environmental movement in the USSR that led to the end of its nuclear dynamite programs. In 1996, a treaty banned all nuclear testing by the U.S. and Russia.

Both American and Soviet scientists are interviewed for the video, discussing their work on the nuclear projects. The most provocative are Commoner, who discusses the folly of these kinds of programs, and Teller, who still maintains the value of nuclear explosions for geographic engineering.

Archival footage of actual explosions in the U.S. and Soviet Union is included, along with scenes from government films that try to explain and justify various programs using nuclear dynamite. The scenes from The Atom and Eve are particularly dumbfounding. Teller is heard extolling the virtues of nuclear energy, while a woman dances around appliances. I wasn’t certain if Teller was heard on the soundtrack of the actual film, or his voice was added to the film for this video. If this was on the film originally, it’s certainly bizarre.

More information on clips that feature Fred MacMurray as a nuclear scientist working on peaceful uses would be helpful. Were these from a Hollywood feature or a government production? The clips certainly back Teller’s position.

A paper accompanying the video says it’s also available in a shorter version that runs 52 minutes, a 20 minute reduction. The full version was reviewed.