Word: canals
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...radioactivity is buried deep under the rubble that falls back into the hole. Ploughshare men are sure that if modern, "clean" explosives are used, the radioactivity that escapes will be of little significance. Permanent population may have to keep away from the neighborhood of the new-dug canal for at least six months, but men under medical supervision may start working there in two weeks...
...trouble in Panama has repercussions that echo all the way to the Livermore, Calif., laboratories of Project Ploughshare, where the AEC is investigating the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Ploughshare scientists are bringing their calculations to a high polish, for if a new Isthmian canal is to be dug, nuclear explosives may be used. And Ploughshare men are sure that they can blast a wide sea-level canal in a couple of years at a fraction of the cost of conventional digging...
Ploughshare has yet to dig any canal-like ditches with long lines of nuclear explosions, but it has experimented elaborately with chemical shots and believes it knows the basic laws that govern both kinds of blasts. If nuclear explosives are placed in "strings" with the distance between them equal to half the diameter of the crater that a single shot would dig, and if they are exploded simultaneously, they will excavate a smooth-bottomed ditch, throwing the rock to the sides. One hundred shots, for instance, of 100 kilotons each, will dig a ditch 1,600 ft. wide...
...will do no serious damage, but scientists are not so sure about ground shock waves. If 50 megatons must be exploded to cut a hole in a mountain ridge, ground shock may shake down buildings many miles away. Luckily, at least three of the most promising canal routes go through almost uninhabited country, with little but jungle and a few huts to be damaged. Another possible danger is radioactivity that may seep up through the bottom of the canal. There is no way to estimate how much will do so, but the strong current that will run through the canal...
...strongest point in the Ploughshare pitch is the low cost of nuclear digging. If employed on a very large scale, atoms are the world's cheapest workers, and they are getting cheaper year by year. Dr. Gerald W. Johnson, scientific director of Ploughshare, believes that a sea-level canal at the Sasardi-Morti route in eastern Panama could be completed, ready for use, for $500 million, using only 170 megatons of explosive. This is hardly more than the present Panama Canal cost when it was completed 50 years...