Nuclear Energy: Instant Canals

Nuclear explosives are almost always so spectacularly destructive that their more constructive capabilities are sometimes overlooked. But not by the persistent U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The AEC’s latest annual report testifies to its determination to get some lasting benefit for man out of nuclear bangs.

The cost of a nuclear explosion is by now far less than the price of the chemical explosives that would be needed to produce the same effects. The chief disadvantage is the radioactivity that may be tossed into the air or left behind in the ground. Now, according to the AEC, this drawback does not seem as serious as it once did. Modern nuclear blasts are “cleaner,” which means that they get most of their energy from hydrogen fusion, create less radioactivity than fission bombs, and experiments in Nevada have shown that little of that radioactivity gets into the air or is deposited in places where it may do harm. The AEC says bluntly: “Large excavations free of serious radioactive contamination can be dug by nuclear explosives.”

This year, if test bans aimed at military weapons do not stop it, the commission plans more underground blasting. Some of its tests will measure the effect of nuclear explosions in various kinds of rock. One of them, using five simultaneous explosions in a row, will try to dig a ditch 700 ft. wide and 125 ft. deep that could serve as a canal capable of handling the biggest ships afloat. A longer row of larger charges might well blast a new sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama in a few loud seconds.