9999

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on January 8, 2012

Ambient office = .097 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .143 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain = .115 microsieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from grocery store  = .085 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .129 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .106 microsieverts per hour

January 08 2013 charts.PNG

A group of contractors headed by Bechtel National and Lockheed Martin has been selected to manage nuclear weapons facilities in Tennessee and Texas. theeagle.com

South Korea has no option but to expand its nuclear power plant program despite growing public concern over safety in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011 and a series of scares that closed two reactors last year. reuters.com

Nuclear energy booster brags about the uprating of nuclear reactors to generation over 100% of the power they were designed to generate. neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com

A new petition is calling on the White House to build a nuclear rocket for fast interplanetary travel. nuclearpower.einnews.com

              Since the development of nuclear bombs in the 1940s, suggestions have been made for possible civilian peaceful uses of these powerful explosives. The United States explored some of these possibilities in Operation Plowshare and the Soviet Union worked on them in their Nuclear Explosives for the National Economy program. The primary use was for large scale earth moving but there were other uses such as seismic exploration and sealing major leaks in gas fields that were considered. Despite the hostility between these two nations during the Cold War, there were several bilateral conferences where scientists from the two nations compare notes on their experiments. After over one hundred explosions were triggered during the tests, in the end, both of these projects were cancelled due to technical problems, environmental pollutions and public opposition. Since the Soviet ended its program in 1989, there have been no other serious explorations of peaceful use of nuclear explosions.

              One project that was proposed in the U.S. but never developed involved the use of nuclear explosions to power a spaceship by what was called Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. A company called General Atomics initiated research into such possibilities in what was called Project Orion in 1958.

              The basic concept was to build a spaceship that would have a shock absorbing disk on the back end. Nuclear bombs, either fission or fusion, would be tossed out of a hole in the center of the disk and their explosions would accelerate the ship. Theoretically, the idea was found to be quite attractive. Space propulsion systems are rated on “thrust” and “specific impulse”.   The thrust is a measure of how much force the propulsion system can generate. To launch a vehicle into space, the thrust must be greater than the force of gravity, analogous to horsepower in a car. Specific impulse is a measure of how much speed can  be generated by a unit mass of propellant, analogous to miles per gallon in a car. Usually, in space propulsion systems, there is a trade-off between thrust and specific-impulse but for the proposed nuclear propulsion has both high thrust and high specific impulse.

            One drawback of the NPP engine is the fact that its thrust comes in the form of explosive bursts. This means that there must be a way to absorb the shock of each blast and protect the rest of the ship from being shaken apart by changing stresses. In addition, there is the problem of intense radiation from the bomb blasts. The rest of the ship and especially the crew must be protected from the radiation. The shock absorber disk can also provide shielding. The design of such a craft would be long and thin with the engine on one end and the crew quarters as far away as possible on the other end.

            With the passage of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 which prohibited nuclear explosion in space, interest in Project Orion waned and the project was dropped in 1965. Through the years since, a number of studies have been done on different configurations of shape and nuclear propulsion for interstellar craft for exploring beyond the solar system. Some of these designs would utilize a greater number of small nuclear explosions from pellets as opposed to the nuclear bombs envisions for Project Orion.

Artist’s conception of a Project Orion vehicle from NASA:

Project Orion.PNG

              The primary use of nuclear bombs is as weapons. They are compact and extremely powerful. However, conventional explosives find use in civilian applications such as excavations for mining and construction. Early in the history of nuclear explosives, the suggestion was made that they might have use for such peaceful purposes.

              The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission had worked during the 1950s to convince the American public that atomic research and development was important for many civilian uses such as nuclear medicine and nuclear power generation. However, the Korean War and the Cold War had created an atmosphere of fear around nuclear science because of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The U.S. government wanted to counter that fear by encouraging the public to believe that the use of atomic bombs could be valuable for civilian projects. They needed to maintain the public’s confidence and support for pouring money into nuclear research much of which aided nuclear weapon research.

             Operation Plowshare (or Project Plowshare) was a child of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. The project was formally launched in 1957. In 1960, Eisenhower’s Vice President delivered a speech in which he discussed the new. He touted the great possibilities of what he called “atomic dynamite” for moving mountains and digging harbors and canals.

              In 1961, Operation Plowshare began testing nuclear bombs for the purpose of earth moving by underground detonation. The idea was to control the placement and size of craters to enabled controlled earthmoving for such things as harbors and canals, mountain passes, earth dams and underground storage caves for water or natural gas. Potential projects were brought forward such as carving a harbor into the coastline of Alaska and digging an alternative to the Panama Canal between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Another possible idea was that nuclear blasts underground could release natural gas locked in the rock or “atomic” fracking. Between 1961 to 1973, 27 atomic bombs were exploded as part of Operation Plowshare, most of them at the Nevada Test site.

             Unfortunately, it turned out that even underground explosions resulted in release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Exact control of the dimensions of the craters were difficult. Underground nuclear explosions to extract natural gas were not as productive as anticipated and residual radioactivity contaminated the gas released. Underground explosions can contaminate underground water threatening supplies for human consumptions and irrigation. Underground nuclear explosions could also aggravate faults lines causing earthquakes.

             Operation Plowshare failed to produce useful results and there was a public backlash against the use nuclear bombs within the borders of the United States, especially near concentrations of population. The last test explosion was in 1973 and all funding ended in 1977. It is estimated that over seven hundred and seventy million dollars was spent during the life of the project. To date, the U.S government has not made public any consideration of further use of atomic bombs for civilian purposes.

Operation Plowshare test crater:

Operation Plowshare crater.JPG