WEBVTT

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[music]

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- In the spring of 1960,
this village in the western Arctic

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was chosen as the site
of a huge nuclear experiment.

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Five atomic bombs would be used
to dig an instant harbor nearby.

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- The great and violent power
of nuclear explosions

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can be used for peaceful purposes.

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Geographical engineering.

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Move great amounts of earth,
build canals, harbors.

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Use nuclear explosives
in the bowels of the earth.

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-Over the next 30 years,

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the Americans and the Russians
set off 150 atomic blasts,

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developing what they called,
peaceful nuclear explosions.

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- There was a lot of enthusiasm,
a lot of excitement.

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I was a young scientist.

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We didn\'t think about money then.

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It was something fantastic.

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We wanted to show our talent, our ability.

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- Nuclear explosions would be
used for gigantic projects

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on a scale never before imagined.

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- It really remarkable event
to see 18 megatons go off

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and lift off two miles of Earth,

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and lay it down in
a channel on the sides.

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- The United States is conducting,
for the benefit of all nations,

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a program called Plowshare.

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- What interested me
about it was the degree

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to which ordinarily intelligent people
would distort their minds

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in order to find something
supposedly useful

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in an inherently very dangerous force.

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- Reshaping the geography
of the land in dimensions never

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before possible to meet
the needs of man.

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- I think it was a kind of intoxication
with the power

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and scale of things you can do
with your mind.

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It gave you a feeling
of playing God, in the way.

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- The idea for a Plowshare began
in San Francisco in 1957.

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It was still early in the nuclear age
and anything seemed possible.

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No one had ever tried using
atomic bombs for engineering,

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but the numbers looked promising.

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If ordinary dynamite could do this much,

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just think what could be done
with nuclear explosives.

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Of course, the public might not
understand the idea at first.

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- I\'m working on a problem,
kind of lost track of the time.

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- What newfangled atomic firecracker
you\'re working on now?

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- Now Pat, you know
we don\'t work on things like that.

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-Sure, Don.

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We\'re putting them atoms to work for us.

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-That\'s right.

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- The obvious application
was that moving great amount

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of Earth became possible.

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I liked, in an early stage,

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the descriptive word
\'Geographical engineering, \'

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to produce harbors,
to produce canals.

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That these things that were badly needed.

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-Edward Teller is one of the most famous

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and controversial scientists
of the nuclear age.

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Teller was the co-inventor
of the hydrogen bomb,

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and he was an outspoken opponent

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of any international treaties

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that would limit nuclear testing.

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In 1958, he became the director
of the Lawrence Livermore laboratories

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and the leader of Project Plowshare.

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-He used to have 100 ideas a day.

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99.9 were terrible,
but the tenth one was a good one.

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Compared to other people,
one good idea per day

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is pretty remarkable even though
the 99 others were awful.

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-Teller\'s basic idea was rather simple.

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Atomic explosions
recreate the temperatures

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and pressures of the sun itself.

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Plowshare would repackage
this energy as an engineering tool.

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It wouldn\'t be an easy sell.

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The bomb had a bad reputation.

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- You have been thinking
about these damages.

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-I have, mom.

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We can\'t just wish this
atomic energy thing away.

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-Of course, we can\'t wish it away.

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I don\'t think that we want to,

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but we learned to make
these things work for us.

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- While some people worried,
others were inspired

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by the idea of planetary engineering.

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Hundreds of projects were
dreamed up.

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It wasn\'t easy to tell
the possible from the bizarre.

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In North America, suggestions
were made like digging

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a tunnel under New York City
or melting oil out

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of the Athabasca tar sands.

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Could a few blasts send
a rocket into outer space?

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Will the smog over Los Angeles
be dispersed by the heat

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from a 10 megaton fireball?

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Or how about blasting
a path through the mountains?

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The biggest idea of all came
from project Plowshare itself.

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- A nuclear blasted route across
Central America

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could provide a navigable
channel 1,000 feet wide,

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offering a virtually unlimited capacity.

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No wonder this enormous project

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has so stimulated
the imagination of the world.

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- Before tackling Panama,
Plowshare needed a safe remote location

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where they could practice digging craters.

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The obvious choice was in Alaska.

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Edward Teller went north to sell the idea.

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He got a warm response.

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- Nuclear explosions
can be used to blast harbors

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in otherwise inaccessible coasts,
to break up the rocks,

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and make them yield up of their riches,

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to reshape the land
to your pleasure.

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- The location Teller had in mind
was on the northwest coast of Alaska.

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Plowshare called it Project Chariot.

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- Consider the development
of a harbor in the hard rock

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of a remote coastal area.

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The procedure, bury an inline series

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of four equally spaced 100
kiloton shots at a terminal shot

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of one megaton detonate.

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- Plowshare\'s scientists
chose a pristine site

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more than 150 kilometers north

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of the Arctic Circle.

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A crew settled in for the winter.

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They had little contact
with the native village

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of Point Hope just
50 kilometers north.

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The Inupiat people of Point Hope
had been living here supported

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by the land and the sea
for about 2000 years.

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[music]

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- The hunting tradition was passed
down through generations.

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- My father used to take me out
over hunting out in the ocean.

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This is where we come by,
stop by over here, pick up some [?].

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When they first come up north,
they don\'t know how

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to land in a cliff, so the [?]
end up dead in the side,

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put in boxes, and polar bears
and other animals were out seal hunting.

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We came down here, and there were
some different kinds of people

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we never seen before.

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We didn\'t really know
what they were doing.

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My father asked them
what they were doing,

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but they didn\'t want to talk.

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-Among the scientists at Cape Thompson,

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were biologists who would be
documenting the effects of the blast

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and the fallout on the plants
and animals of the Arctic.

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-One of the first steps was to conduct

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a very elaborate environmental
study of the area.

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This is the first really large
environmental study

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that had ever been made since Lewis
and Clark Expedition back in 1800.

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It looked at all aspects
of the environment,

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all the flora and fauna in the area,

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all the food chains in the area.

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The environmental study on Chariot

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may very well have laid the grounds

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for the environmental study
that\'s required

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for almost every project
that\'s done in this country today.

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- While the ground was being
prepared in Alaska, Plowshare

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was often running with a small
experiment in New Mexico.

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Invitations went out to the media
and to foreign governments.

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This explosion in a deep layer of salt

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would be less than a quarter
of the size of the blast at Hiroshima.

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In theory, the heat and radiation

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would be completely contained underground.

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Plowshare\'s first experiment
did not go according to plan.

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There was an embarrassing leak
of radioactive steam

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that contaminated
the helicopter and 10 cars.

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The Soviet government didn\'t show up.

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They claimed that Plowshare
was just a military test in disguise.

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Teller responded.

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- In the Gnome site,
we have performed an explosion

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to find out the behavior of nuclear
explosives in this new medium, salt.

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We performed that explosion
for peaceful purposes alone.

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- Any explosion, peaceful
or weapon, will kill people.

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The difference basically
is that peaceful nuclear explosions

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are designed physically and chemically

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so that they\'re optimized for
the peaceful nuclear explosion use.

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In some sense, there may be
either bigger or smaller

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or heavier than a weapon
until they generally

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are not optimum for weapons use.

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There\'s nothing to keep them
from being used for weapons.

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- Plowshare tried to prove
its peaceful intentions

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by making the results
of the experiment public.

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Scientists from the Soviet Union
missed the opportunity

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to witness the test,

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but at least they could see the pictures.

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- In the early \'60s,
you may remember a rivalry existed

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between the Soviet Union and the US.

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It was the time of the Cold War,

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and the main financing
went to the military.

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But thanks to American scientists,

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and their publishing some
materials on the peaceful use

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of nuclear explosions,
we started to pay attention to the idea.

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- The atomic fireball melted out
the world\'s first nuclear cave.

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It also set fire to the imagination
of scientists around the world.

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How else could these
small atomic explosions be used?

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- In the early \'60s,
Sakharov if I remember,

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once invited us into his office
and told us about his idea

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for an interstellar spaceship.

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It would be propelled through space
by micronuclear explosives.

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[music]

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- While the Soviet scientists talked
about an atomic rocket,

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American scientists
were already working on one.

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Sponsored by the US Air Force.

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-We started the project in \'58,

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and we had the 10-year program
which would get us to Mars.

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[explosion]

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The scale models were actually
not really part of the project.

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It was essentially to give us a platform,

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the fun of actually seeing them go up
and going bang, bang, bang,

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which of course is always nice.

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Apart from that, it was to give us
a feeling of confidence

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that we could actually build something
that would work.

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[music]

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They had six explosive charges
which were just chemical explosives.

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Each of them was I think half
a pound of high explosives.

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It had to be done rather carefully.

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The bombs were shot out
through a hole in the bottom.

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It\'s heavy machinery clattering
back and forth.

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To get these things out,
it\'s rather like a machine gun,

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but on a big scale.

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[explosion]

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The ship had to be something
like 100-foot diameter

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to take the impact without
getting blown to pieces.

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It had to be big right from the beginning.

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That set the scale of the thing,

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so that we were talking about ships
that weighed 5000 tons,

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carried 1000 bombs.

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It was built more like
a submarine than like an airplane.

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We were all very enthusiastic,
because we were all young,

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and we went out on Saturday mornings
for these model flights.

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I always went along,
because it was tremendous fun.

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[explosion]

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The main driving force for me was actually

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exploring the solar system.

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The fact that we could do it a lot cheaper

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than they could with chemical rockets.

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I had dreams of beating on Anderson Brown
by about a factor of 10.

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He estimated it would take
10 billion to get to Mars,

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and we thought we\'d do it for 1 billion.

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That was roughly the challenge.

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[music]

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-Would the public embrace the idea

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of more nuclear explosions
just when military testing

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was creating a wave of fear and anxiety?

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- Dr. Alexander, what happens
if the nuclear tests continue?

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- If the tests continue
to increase in numbers

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there have been over the last few years,

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more and more tests every year,

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then it should lead to danger point
within one or two years, perhaps.

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[music]

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- How can you avoid getting
the public concerned when fallout

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is dust coming down from the sky?

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People began to think,
\"Well, what\'s that on my lawn?\"

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It gets very personal.

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- The pictures out
of Hiroshima would come to mind

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when you talk about the effects
of radiation on the human body.

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Those photographs were
so powerful, and were so scary.

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This was all so new,
falling for something

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that we really had just come
to the attention of the public

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and we wanted to know.

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It was the fear of not knowing,
and knowing it was evil.

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You don\'t know why,
but you knew it was bad.

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- Much of the mystery
surrounding it is maintained

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by the general public,
which is determined

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to regard radioactivity
as potent and irresistible

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as the evil spirits of the Indians.

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Radioactivity is dangerous,
but to say that it\'s deadly period,

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is as misleading as giving a flat answer

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to the question, how high is up?

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The radium-treated dial of your watch,
for instance, is harmless.

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- The campaign to reduce public
concern about radiation

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was constantly frustrated
by new atomic tests by the military.

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The new hydrogen bombs,
which Teller helped to invent,

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were 1000 times more powerful
than the Hiroshima bomb.

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[explosion]

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The Soviet Union tested the largest
bombs ever made in the Arctic.

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The Shockwave from this explosion
circled the planet three times.

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Military tests were also carried out
underground in Nevada

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to cut down on fallout, but underground
explosions were hard to control.

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[sound]

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When the power of the sun
is ignited underground,

00:18:42.338 --> 00:18:44.340
tremendous forces are released.

00:18:44.807 --> 00:18:47.443
Temperatures rise to millions of degrees.

00:18:47.977 --> 00:18:53.249
Rock and water are vaporized
and the hot gases force their way upwards.

00:19:02.258 --> 00:19:04.994
Clouds of fallout for military tests below

00:19:05.094 --> 00:19:09.832
and above ground drifted across
North America and around the world.

00:19:10.733 --> 00:19:15.604
As it landed, it awakened a new
understanding of the environment.

00:19:16.639 --> 00:19:21.710
- You had radioactive material,
including strontium-90, in the air.

00:19:21.944 --> 00:19:27.650
Comes down, for example,
and rainfall gets on the grass,

00:19:28.784 --> 00:19:31.320
is taken up by the leaves.

00:19:32.054 --> 00:19:35.391
The cows eat it, gets into their milk.

00:19:35.791 --> 00:19:40.996
The kids drink the milk,
it gets into their bones and teeth.

00:19:41.230 --> 00:19:44.333
- The cows give milk,
and milk is fed to babies.

00:19:44.400 --> 00:19:46.368
My god, what\'s happening to the babies?

00:19:46.402 --> 00:19:47.970
-What are the main hazards involved?

00:19:48.003 --> 00:19:49.003
Is it fallout?

00:19:49.138 --> 00:19:53.175
- Yes, it is fallout,
but it isn\'t immediate sickness.

00:19:53.209 --> 00:19:56.478
It\'s long-term effect genetic
like above all cancer,

00:19:56.612 --> 00:19:59.048
bone cancer in children.

00:20:00.516 --> 00:20:02.251
-To measure that danger,

00:20:02.384 --> 00:20:04.920
Commoner\'s group began
collecting baby teeth

00:20:05.020 --> 00:20:06.655
and testing them for strontium.

00:20:07.456 --> 00:20:10.859
- The biological danger,
the danger of cancer

00:20:11.393 --> 00:20:15.798
from the strontium-90
is in the bones not in the teeth.

00:20:16.131 --> 00:20:20.936
The teeth is simply a way
of getting a convenient sample

00:20:21.070 --> 00:20:23.005
in a non-intrusive way.

00:20:23.639 --> 00:20:28.978
People understood right away
that the idea of collecting teeth

00:20:29.178 --> 00:20:32.915
and analyzing it for this purpose
made a lot of sense.

00:20:33.115 --> 00:20:36.285
- This was parents afraid of what\'s
happening to the kids,

00:20:36.452 --> 00:20:41.457
and willing anxious to participate
in some kind of study

00:20:41.523 --> 00:20:42.725
to get some information.

00:20:42.858 --> 00:20:46.862
I think the basic thing was, we didn\'t
know what all this fallout meant.

00:20:47.062 --> 00:20:51.400
If it felt ominous,
but we didn\'t know much

00:20:51.433 --> 00:20:53.869
about what to do about it,
and this seemed to be

00:20:53.902 --> 00:20:55.404
an innocuous way of finding out.

00:20:55.604 --> 00:21:02.378
- Every kid that gave
a tooth got a little, button that said,

00:21:02.544 --> 00:21:05.714
\"I gave my tooth to science.\"

00:21:06.148 --> 00:21:12.988
I still meet people who say
I walked around grade one with a,

00:21:13.088 --> 00:21:14.590
button like that.

00:21:16.091 --> 00:21:19.695
- In the end,
the thing got so much publicity

00:21:19.862 --> 00:21:22.531
that we were getting teeth
from all over the world.

00:21:23.065 --> 00:21:28.704
- People totally understood
if I don\'t want strontium-90

00:21:28.804 --> 00:21:34.576
in my children\'s teeth,
I can\'t privatize that.

00:21:35.010 --> 00:21:36.912
It\'s indivisible.

00:21:37.079 --> 00:21:43.218
I must see to it
that there\'s no strontium-90

00:21:43.319 --> 00:21:47.389
in any\'s children\'s teeth,
anywhere in the water.

00:21:49.191 --> 00:21:55.331
That was a recruitment for
a peace movement as well

00:21:55.431 --> 00:22:03.431
as an immense education in worth living
in a common environment means.

00:22:04.039 --> 00:22:09.244
You don\'t muck around with that,
because you can\'t clean it up.

00:22:11.280 --> 00:22:15.117
- Concern about fallout helped
to build the peace movement,

00:22:15.217 --> 00:22:18.220
and this had an immediate
and unexpected impact

00:22:18.354 --> 00:22:20.622
on a Plowshare project in Canada.

00:22:22.057 --> 00:22:23.659
Prime Minister Diefenbaker,

00:22:23.726 --> 00:22:27.963
was under intense pressure
to keep nuclear weapons out of Canada.

00:22:29.298 --> 00:22:32.668
One of Plowshare\'s first
experiments was supposed

00:22:32.735 --> 00:22:35.504
to take place in the Athabasca tar sands.

00:22:36.772 --> 00:22:40.275
- The possibility of releasing
petroleum from oil shale

00:22:40.442 --> 00:22:43.412
is suggested by the fact
that most of the energy

00:22:43.512 --> 00:22:44.680
was released as heat.

00:22:45.614 --> 00:22:48.851
The crushing and heating
with distilled petroleum

00:22:49.017 --> 00:22:50.652
through pipes to the surface.

00:22:52.087 --> 00:22:55.924
- The provincial government
and the oil industry endorsed the plan.

00:22:56.291 --> 00:22:59.395
In Washington,
the Atomic Energy Commission,

00:22:59.495 --> 00:23:03.432
which controlled Plowshare,
went ahead and announced the date.

00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:06.702
That was a mistake.

00:23:08.437 --> 00:23:12.908
The prime minister was getting mail
from voters objecting to the plan.

00:23:14.276 --> 00:23:18.480
Diefenbaker was opposed to the spread
of any nuclear explosives,

00:23:18.814 --> 00:23:20.582
military or civilian.

00:23:21.850 --> 00:23:25.454
The project was scrapped, but in Alaska,

00:23:25.687 --> 00:23:27.723
Plowshare was still on schedule.

00:23:28.724 --> 00:23:31.593
In nearby Point Hope,
there was a new arrival,

00:23:32.127 --> 00:23:34.696
a young priest who took
an immediate interest

00:23:34.763 --> 00:23:36.298
in the plans for the explosion.

00:23:37.166 --> 00:23:39.668
- I went down there
and I saw the camp

00:23:39.768 --> 00:23:42.871
and the whole production and it looked
like nobody\'s fooling around.

00:23:42.938 --> 00:23:44.538
They\'re really getting down to business,

00:23:45.174 --> 00:23:49.912
and really accomplishing
some things very quickly.

00:23:52.714 --> 00:23:56.585
I thought I would see evidence
of holes being drilled

00:23:56.652 --> 00:24:00.389
for the nuclear devices
that would be detonated,

00:24:00.556 --> 00:24:03.992
and I got up to where they were.

00:24:04.660 --> 00:24:08.397
- The plan called
for five simultaneous explosions.

00:24:08.730 --> 00:24:12.167
The largest would be 10 times
the size of Hiroshima.

00:24:13.836 --> 00:24:15.838
-The bunker that they were going to build

00:24:15.904 --> 00:24:21.243
to shield themselves
was way south down the line,

00:24:21.944 --> 00:24:24.646
almost as far away that way to the south,

00:24:24.813 --> 00:24:27.883
then down past three sets of hills,

00:24:28.016 --> 00:24:33.188
as it was to Point Hope
about 30 miles away.

00:24:35.491 --> 00:24:39.094
They didn\'t want to talk about
the wind direction changing.

00:24:40.529 --> 00:24:42.331
All they wanted to talk about is if they

00:24:42.397 --> 00:24:44.433
had the wind in the right direction
when they did it,

00:24:44.466 --> 00:24:46.368
then we wouldn\'t have
to worry about fallout.

00:24:48.103 --> 00:24:51.240
- The Atomic Energy Commission
apparently assumed

00:24:51.306 --> 00:24:53.575
that the village would go
along with the test,

00:24:53.775 --> 00:24:56.378
but as more information about radiation

00:24:56.512 --> 00:24:58.480
and fallout circulated in the village,

00:24:58.847 --> 00:25:01.049
resistance to the blast was growing.

00:25:01.917 --> 00:25:07.990
- I served two years in the Army,
and they used to have some films.

00:25:08.090 --> 00:25:14.429
The films that shows the movies
on atomic bombs could be bad,

00:25:14.496 --> 00:25:15.496
and that radiation.

00:25:15.697 --> 00:25:18.834
- Sound medical practice demands
eating only food

00:25:18.967 --> 00:25:20.669
which has been inspected and passed on,

00:25:20.936 --> 00:25:23.972
guarding against
breathing radioactive dust,

00:25:25.307 --> 00:25:28.210
care in handling contaminated
articles such as clothing,

00:25:28.877 --> 00:25:32.014
washing them or disposing of them
if badly contaminated.

00:25:35.584 --> 00:25:39.388
- Resistance to the test was fueled
by Plowshare scientists

00:25:39.488 --> 00:25:42.724
who were leaking information
from the environmental study.

00:25:43.525 --> 00:25:46.395
Anthropologist Don Foote,
who lived in the village,

00:25:46.628 --> 00:25:50.999
warned the hunters that fallout
could contaminate their food supply.

00:25:51.700 --> 00:25:53.735
-When I would ask him questions,

00:25:54.136 --> 00:25:56.905
what was the process,
and what was going on,

00:25:56.939 --> 00:25:59.241
and how far along were they?

00:26:01.276 --> 00:26:02.744
He didn\'t try to lie about it.

00:26:03.111 --> 00:26:05.847
He thought that there should be
second thoughts about it.

00:26:06.582 --> 00:26:09.251
He was right upfront
with what was going on.

00:26:10.152 --> 00:26:12.788
- Nearly two years
after the site was chosen,

00:26:12.955 --> 00:26:15.691
Plowshare sent a delegation
to Point Hope

00:26:15.958 --> 00:26:17.693
to show the promotional film.

00:26:18.694 --> 00:26:21.964
- Assume a channel approximately
400 meters wide,

00:26:22.097 --> 00:26:26.401
1500 meters long,
and at least 20 meters deep.

00:26:27.002 --> 00:26:30.439
- The scientists didn\'t know
what kind of response to expect.

00:26:30.572 --> 00:26:34.643
The presence of tape recorders
at the meeting was a bad omen.

00:26:35.544 --> 00:26:42.851
- I had a sense of some kind
of withdrawal like, \"No.

00:26:42.884 --> 00:26:45.654
We got to be three times
as careful about what we say.\"

00:26:46.254 --> 00:26:49.658
- What is the effect upon
radiological safety in the area?

00:26:50.926 --> 00:26:52.761
With the fireball contained,

00:26:53.462 --> 00:26:56.531
there would be minimal
thermal effects above ground.

00:26:57.399 --> 00:27:01.236
-He tells the people, it\'s not dangerous.

00:27:01.870 --> 00:27:06.074
When this happened,
nuclear test or the bombing,

00:27:07.342 --> 00:27:10.612
I can take my family
over there and live there.

00:27:10.812 --> 00:27:13.615
He said it won\'t affect anything.

00:27:14.449 --> 00:27:16.418
I didn\'t really believe it myself.

00:27:17.285 --> 00:27:20.856
- Radioactivity in the region
of the crater would be washed out

00:27:21.023 --> 00:27:25.394
into the ocean rapidly, and essentially
removed from the biosphere.

00:27:27.362 --> 00:27:28.997
-It\'s was a heavy-duty meeting.

00:27:29.231 --> 00:27:30.565
There was a heavy-duty meeting.

00:27:30.732 --> 00:27:33.535
It lasted about maybe five hours.

00:27:34.703 --> 00:27:38.073
They were looking at some pretty
determined Inupiats trying

00:27:38.140 --> 00:27:39.420
to keep themselves who they are.

00:27:40.275 --> 00:27:41.510
How would you be, if you\'re going

00:27:41.543 --> 00:27:44.246
to protect your own community
and your lifestyle,

00:27:44.346 --> 00:27:46.882
and your kids in your future generation?

00:27:47.015 --> 00:27:48.583
You\'d feel the same way.

00:27:49.351 --> 00:27:53.422
- Soon after the meeting,
the village council sent out an appeal

00:27:53.455 --> 00:27:56.692
for help to church groups
and activists in the south.

00:27:58.093 --> 00:28:00.062
-What if something should go wrong?

00:28:00.729 --> 00:28:02.130
It is too late then.

00:28:03.799 --> 00:28:06.735
I and many others
are aware of how dangerous

00:28:06.868 --> 00:28:11.406
it will be to this village,
the radiation that is.

00:28:13.108 --> 00:28:18.513
- They\'re studying on this,
because they are not sure of this bomb.

00:28:19.748 --> 00:28:27.589
It may be harmful to both
animals and the people near it.

00:28:28.290 --> 00:28:32.127
- We would like to be sure
the game we\'ve taken,

00:28:32.260 --> 00:28:37.766
it is fit to eat
or this village is safe to live in

00:28:38.100 --> 00:28:41.536
for our next generation, and thank you.

00:28:44.005 --> 00:28:47.242
- We decided this is a very
important thing to deal with,

00:28:48.009 --> 00:28:51.346
and the whole-
the entire Scientific Committee

00:28:51.513 --> 00:28:54.883
in St. Louis got to work on it.

00:28:55.050 --> 00:29:00.455
We put out an entire issue
of the magazine dealing

00:29:00.522 --> 00:29:03.358
with various aspects of Chariot.

00:29:04.493 --> 00:29:09.030
- Commoner\'s magazine described
evidence of a newly discovered food chain

00:29:09.064 --> 00:29:10.064
in the Arctic.

00:29:10.432 --> 00:29:15.403
Lichens soak up radiation from fallout,
caribou eat the lichens,

00:29:15.637 --> 00:29:17.773
and the people depend on the caribou.

00:29:18.573 --> 00:29:20.809
This little girl in central Alaska

00:29:20.909 --> 00:29:24.312
had the highest strontium count
measured in the United States

00:29:24.646 --> 00:29:26.982
due to fallout from military tests.

00:29:27.549 --> 00:29:30.051
Project Chariot would add even more.

00:29:32.521 --> 00:29:35.991
- It became absolutely clear
that when you thought about it,

00:29:36.191 --> 00:29:39.728
this was an aspect of the way

00:29:39.895 --> 00:29:45.534
in which the natural environment
supports human life,

00:29:46.401 --> 00:29:51.373
and how distorting
its natural chemistry

00:29:52.040 --> 00:29:56.411
of the environment
will damage human life.

00:29:58.046 --> 00:30:01.583
It was the Atomic Energy Commission
that converted me

00:30:01.616 --> 00:30:03.084
into an ecologist.

00:30:05.487 --> 00:30:07.455
-The environmental study was supposed

00:30:07.522 --> 00:30:09.591
to pave the way for Project Chariot.

00:30:10.158 --> 00:30:14.062
Now it was being used by critics
to slow everything down.

00:30:14.663 --> 00:30:17.699
Inside the lab,
Teller called the whole process,

00:30:17.866 --> 00:30:20.335
a giant ecological boondoggle.

00:30:21.136 --> 00:30:25.106
- There was a more ferment
in the air from Barry Commoner,

00:30:25.207 --> 00:30:28.310
and the weapons,
the whole weapons fallout thing.

00:30:30.579 --> 00:30:31.613
There was a lot of talk talking.

00:30:31.646 --> 00:30:33.849
I remember at some
of the directors meetings,

00:30:36.618 --> 00:30:40.989
Edward Teller would
always be talking about,

00:30:41.122 --> 00:30:43.825
\"We\'re a tight little Island here,

00:30:43.925 --> 00:30:46.561
and outside everybody
is unfriendly to us.\"

00:30:46.728 --> 00:30:51.366
I felt, \"Hey, look,
I\'m not a politician here.

00:30:51.433 --> 00:30:55.070
I\'m here as a scientist
and I want to do scientific work.

00:30:55.136 --> 00:30:58.006
I want to know that it\'s work
that\'s going to contribute to health,

00:30:58.039 --> 00:30:59.040
not destroy health.

00:30:59.241 --> 00:31:02.177
\" Hearing these things about
we\'re a tight little Island

00:31:02.210 --> 00:31:05.547
and we do everything we need
to do for our programs,

00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:10.752
just didn\'t seem to jive with
my idea of my responsibility.

00:31:12.954 --> 00:31:14.990
-Frustrated by opposition to Chariot,

00:31:15.357 --> 00:31:18.693
Plowshare turn
to the Nevada test site for a series

00:31:18.760 --> 00:31:20.295
of cratering experiments.

00:31:20.829 --> 00:31:23.565
Nevada is America\'s primary test site,

00:31:23.632 --> 00:31:26.468
home to 90% of its nuclear explosions.

00:31:27.469 --> 00:31:29.137
Many of these military tests,

00:31:29.204 --> 00:31:32.741
deep underground created
small craters themselves.

00:31:32.974 --> 00:31:35.076
As the ground fell in after the blast.

00:31:43.285 --> 00:31:45.921
Plowshare had much bigger plans.

00:31:47.489 --> 00:31:50.825
-A major step was taken in July 1962

00:31:50.859 --> 00:31:53.361
to develop the technology
and safety requirements

00:31:53.395 --> 00:31:56.831
for the immense excavation projects
toward which Plowshare was building.

00:31:59.601 --> 00:32:01.436
This was Project Sedan.

00:32:03.038 --> 00:32:05.874
- This was the first time
that a nuclear bomb

00:32:06.107 --> 00:32:07.642
would be used to dig a hole.

00:32:13.014 --> 00:32:15.016
[music]

00:32:27.862 --> 00:32:29.864
The sun rising out of the earth,

00:32:29.998 --> 00:32:33.468
created a mound half
the height of a skyscraper

00:32:33.635 --> 00:32:35.704
[music]

00:32:54.122 --> 00:32:58.226
The dust cloud would\'ve
blanketed the city, the size of New York.

00:33:02.530 --> 00:33:06.067
Near the ground,
the dust rolled North in a dense cloud.

00:33:06.968 --> 00:33:10.238
In Ely, Nevada, 300 kilometers north,

00:33:10.372 --> 00:33:13.241
the street lights came on
at 4:00 in the afternoon.

00:33:14.943 --> 00:33:17.912
The blast released
more radiation than expected,

00:33:18.046 --> 00:33:21.349
but a new generation
of explosives was on the way.

00:33:21.916 --> 00:33:24.352
Teller was eager to get started.

00:33:25.620 --> 00:33:29.724
- We can make these nuclear
explosives cleaner and cleaner.

00:33:30.425 --> 00:33:34.562
I think the time
is not far off where we can hope

00:33:34.763 --> 00:33:38.233
to have nuclear explosives,
completely clean.

00:33:42.003 --> 00:33:45.173
- Unleashing the power
of the sun inside the earth

00:33:45.273 --> 00:33:50.045
left a crater 400 meters across
and a hundred meters deep.

00:33:50.845 --> 00:33:53.314
The craters for the Panama Canal Project

00:33:53.481 --> 00:33:57.419
would have to be even larger,
but Teller was feeling confident.

00:33:58.153 --> 00:34:00.155
-Then I got the Fermi award,

00:34:00.922 --> 00:34:04.692
given to me with a nice check
from President Kennedy,

00:34:06.394 --> 00:34:10.698
he asked me,
\"How long do you think you will take

00:34:11.466 --> 00:34:15.669
with the Panama canal?\"
Now, he used that opportunity,

00:34:15.670 --> 00:34:20.708
very unintentionally,
to prove that I am no politician.

00:34:22.410 --> 00:34:26.915
My answer was,
\"It will take us, Mr. President,

00:34:26.981 --> 00:34:31.286
less time than it will take you
to make up your mind.\"

00:34:35.723 --> 00:34:38.927
- The old Panama canal
took nearly half a century

00:34:39.027 --> 00:34:42.230
to build and killed 26,000 workers.

00:34:42.497 --> 00:34:43.932
Mostly from malaria.

00:34:47.068 --> 00:34:49.770
But it was the pinnacle
of geographical engineering

00:34:49.771 --> 00:34:50.972
in the age of steam.

00:34:56.244 --> 00:35:00.014
Only 50 years later,
the canal could barely accommodate

00:35:00.048 --> 00:35:01.816
a new generation of ships.

00:35:04.085 --> 00:35:07.922
Plowshare was offering a new
and larger sea-level canal.

00:35:08.590 --> 00:35:13.595
This would be a demonstration of planetary
engineering in the atomic age.

00:35:14.162 --> 00:35:17.031
This was all a grand gamble for Plowshare.

00:35:17.532 --> 00:35:18.666
Like the race to the moon,

00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:23.204
all the technology would have to be
invented and tested on the fly.

00:35:24.339 --> 00:35:30.378
- The design was to shoot
this Panama Canal in alternate sections.

00:35:30.912 --> 00:35:32.247
This is one section.

00:35:32.480 --> 00:35:35.583
Let me skip over this one,
and do that one over here.

00:35:36.084 --> 00:35:38.319
Then come back and sequence,

00:35:39.187 --> 00:35:42.957
and take out
the remaining sections one at a time.

00:35:43.491 --> 00:35:45.560
We had absolutely no experience

00:35:45.727 --> 00:35:50.265
in connecting excavation
sections in this manner.

00:35:51.566 --> 00:35:54.502
- Digging the canal would
require hundreds of explosions.

00:35:54.602 --> 00:35:57.705
The largest blast would be
a thousand times

00:35:57.772 --> 00:36:00.508
larger than the explosion at Hiroshima.

00:36:01.776 --> 00:36:06.247
The project was making progress
and it had friends in high places.

00:36:06.915 --> 00:36:09.017
Former team leader, Harold Brown,

00:36:09.117 --> 00:36:12.587
was a rising star in Washington
under President Johnson.

00:36:13.655 --> 00:36:18.059
- In the Pentagon, I ran into Harold Brown
and Harold said,

00:36:18.092 --> 00:36:22.030
\"Well, what did you think
of the canal project?\"

00:36:22.363 --> 00:36:24.632
I said, \"Well, I\'m Harold.

00:36:24.666 --> 00:36:27.502
I\'ll tell you what I told
the directors on one

00:36:27.569 --> 00:36:29.404
of our Thursday director\'s meetings.

00:36:29.504 --> 00:36:33.341
I think the Panama canal idea
is a biological insanity.\"

00:36:35.777 --> 00:36:37.979
Harold said, \"That\'s interesting.\"

00:36:38.146 --> 00:36:40.148
He said,
\"Let me tell you something, Jack.\"

00:36:40.281 --> 00:36:47.522
He said, \"If Lyndon Johnson
wants to dig a canal in Panama,

00:36:47.689 --> 00:36:51.059
Lyndon Johnson\'s
going to dig a canal in Panama.\"

00:36:51.693 --> 00:36:56.631
- Halfway around the world,
in a remote corner of Kazakhstan,

00:36:56.831 --> 00:37:00.802
Russian scientists were secretly
preparing their own response

00:37:00.935 --> 00:37:04.038
to the ambitious American
Plowshare program.

00:37:05.773 --> 00:37:09.978
For years, the Soviet government
had been objecting to Plowshare,

00:37:10.178 --> 00:37:13.181
calling it a military program in disguise.

00:37:14.215 --> 00:37:18.853
After 1963, the Russian scientists
had their own program.

00:37:22.857 --> 00:37:24.993
-I am grateful to American scientists

00:37:25.193 --> 00:37:27.362
for publishing articles
about their program.

00:37:29.664 --> 00:37:31.666
They didn\'t give out all the details,

00:37:31.966 --> 00:37:36.204
but enough for us to see how they
were using peaceful nuclear explosions.

00:37:37.905 --> 00:37:40.241
It stimulated our government
to support us.

00:37:42.477 --> 00:37:44.612
Of course, the scientists
who were working

00:37:44.646 --> 00:37:47.649
on nuclear weapons projects
started to work

00:37:47.682 --> 00:37:49.317
on this program with enthusiasm.

00:37:52.453 --> 00:37:56.724
There was a lot of creativity
and lots of different projects.

00:37:57.892 --> 00:38:01.696
- They called their program,
Peaceful Nuclear Explosions

00:38:01.896 --> 00:38:03.298
for the National Economy.

00:38:09.070 --> 00:38:12.373
- Like the Americans,
they began with a big crater.

00:38:21.282 --> 00:38:24.652
- But they plan to trump
the Americans by putting it to work.

00:38:28.122 --> 00:38:31.125
- One way or another,
we knew about the American program.

00:38:31.959 --> 00:38:36.931
The Chagan reservoir is a mirror image
of the American project,

00:38:36.998 --> 00:38:39.233
but with one important difference.

00:38:40.768 --> 00:38:43.237
We\'ll put our hearts
and souls in the project.

00:38:43.338 --> 00:38:47.709
We were determined to make
something useful from the beginning.

00:39:04.659 --> 00:39:08.363
- The world\'s first nuclear craters
in Kazakhstan and Nevada,

00:39:08.463 --> 00:39:10.965
we\'re twins, identical in size.

00:39:13.501 --> 00:39:15.703
As the radiation levels cooled down,

00:39:16.003 --> 00:39:19.607
the Soviet Minister of Atomic Energy,
Efim Slavsky,

00:39:19.741 --> 00:39:21.909
demonstrated how safe it was.

00:39:31.753 --> 00:39:34.055
-Our Minister was a strong and tough man.

00:39:34.856 --> 00:39:36.858
One time a man came to his office

00:39:36.924 --> 00:39:40.094
and said, \"I worked with the uranium 238.

00:39:40.161 --> 00:39:41.396
This is a hazardous job.

00:39:41.429 --> 00:39:42.764
I should have more money for it.\"

00:39:42.964 --> 00:39:46.401
Slavsky pulled a piece
of Uranium out of drawer

00:39:46.534 --> 00:39:49.670
and eat it and said, \"See, I eat it.

00:39:49.837 --> 00:39:51.773
What the benefits are you talking about?\"

00:39:53.574 --> 00:39:58.413
- Efim Slavsky was a powerful Soviet
Minister for nearly 30 years.

00:40:00.848 --> 00:40:03.684
-Slavski was instrumental in everything

00:40:03.785 --> 00:40:05.019
we did within the program.

00:40:05.553 --> 00:40:08.122
Without his energy, his forcefulness,

00:40:08.189 --> 00:40:11.859
and his conviction that the program
will be successful and productive,

00:40:11.926 --> 00:40:13.928
I don\'t know what they would have done.

00:40:16.063 --> 00:40:18.566
-Soon after digging the Chagan reservoir,

00:40:18.733 --> 00:40:21.369
the minister and his staff were called in

00:40:21.402 --> 00:40:25.273
to deal with an emergency
in the oil fields of Uzbekistan.

00:40:25.907 --> 00:40:29.911
A gas well had ruptured,
and it was burning out of control.

00:40:33.648 --> 00:40:35.082
-The gusher was huge.

00:40:35.149 --> 00:40:38.453
I don\'t remember exactly but millions

00:40:38.553 --> 00:40:41.055
of cubic meters were going up in flames.

00:40:42.156 --> 00:40:45.226
None of the usual
methods could put it out.

00:40:46.794 --> 00:40:49.997
The military even tried
to shoot into the well

00:40:50.031 --> 00:40:51.432
with a [?]

00:40:54.502 --> 00:40:56.304
but nothing worked.

00:40:58.873 --> 00:41:03.544
The decision was made to use
a nuclear explosion to stop the gusher.

00:41:05.413 --> 00:41:10.518
The idea was to dig a new shaft
as close as possible to the old well.

00:41:14.155 --> 00:41:15.990
We built what was needed.

00:41:16.090 --> 00:41:18.993
It took us just 40 days to prepare it all.

00:41:55.530 --> 00:41:59.000
- In a moment,
this terrible noise disappeared.

00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.869
The smell of gas disappeared immediately.

00:42:05.673 --> 00:42:09.977
Our feelings was one
of joy and excitement.

00:42:11.112 --> 00:42:12.613
We succeeded.

00:42:14.181 --> 00:42:18.519
- After a slow start, the Soviet program
was gathering momentum.

00:42:56.991 --> 00:43:00.861
- The Russian engineers were
on the move, the Americans were not.

00:43:01.395 --> 00:43:06.200
The Chariot blast was stalled
for two years by questions about fallout.

00:43:06.367 --> 00:43:10.204
Plowshare was stymied,
the scientists were called home.

00:43:11.005 --> 00:43:13.207
-We decided before we closed the site,

00:43:13.307 --> 00:43:17.411
that we\'d carry out
a small-scale cratering explosion

00:43:17.478 --> 00:43:21.449
to add that kind of medium
and to compare the results

00:43:21.482 --> 00:43:24.318
in that medium to what
we\'ve gotten in other kinds of rock.

00:43:24.485 --> 00:43:28.389
I think it was a six-pound
chemical charge.

00:43:32.593 --> 00:43:35.363
The day after the explosion,
we closed the site

00:43:35.396 --> 00:43:36.764
and took off and flew back.

00:43:39.700 --> 00:43:42.703
-Plowshare only set off three kilograms

00:43:42.737 --> 00:43:45.272
of ordinary explosives at Cape Thompson.

00:43:46.307 --> 00:43:47.742
What would it have looked like

00:43:47.842 --> 00:43:52.146
if they had touched off the equivalent
of 200 million kilograms?

00:43:52.747 --> 00:43:56.250
The film shown to the people
of Point Hope looked like this.

00:43:57.518 --> 00:44:00.554
The actual explosion
would have sent a cloud

00:44:00.621 --> 00:44:02.957
at least five kilometers into the air,

00:44:03.124 --> 00:44:06.160
sending fallout halfway across Alaska.

00:44:06.327 --> 00:44:08.829
That blast never took place.

00:44:09.163 --> 00:44:12.266
A small amount of fallout
was spread around

00:44:12.333 --> 00:44:14.669
by hand as part of an experiment.

00:44:15.302 --> 00:44:18.839
The radioactive dust came
from the Nevada Test Site.

00:44:20.207 --> 00:44:22.977
An armed guard stood watch
because the sample

00:44:23.044 --> 00:44:25.312
of the fallout can reveal information

00:44:25.413 --> 00:44:27.148
about the bomb that produced it.

00:44:28.582 --> 00:44:30.251
The test plots were buried.

00:44:32.386 --> 00:44:35.289
The test remained secret for 30 years.

00:44:38.626 --> 00:44:42.496
Questions about fallout had
prevented the big blast in Alaska,

00:44:42.730 --> 00:44:46.333
and they also threatened
the future of the Orion Project.

00:44:47.501 --> 00:44:51.739
-I always knew that the radiation dose

00:44:51.839 --> 00:44:59.714
to the public was the decisive
question that we had to address.

00:44:59.814 --> 00:45:03.951
That was what would
either let it go ahead or not.

00:45:04.518 --> 00:45:07.955
If we could get the dose down
to a level the public would accept,

00:45:08.122 --> 00:45:08.889
that would be fine.

00:45:08.923 --> 00:45:09.990
If not, we wouldn\'t go.

00:45:10.391 --> 00:45:13.828
- The rocket, meanwhile,
looked like it really would fly.

00:45:13.928 --> 00:45:15.629
The scientists were thrilled.

00:45:16.297 --> 00:45:19.467
The Airforce which paid
the bills wasn\'t so sure.

00:45:21.202 --> 00:45:24.171
-We tried to invent military missions

00:45:24.238 --> 00:45:27.808
to satisfy the Airforce
because they were paying for it.

00:45:28.642 --> 00:45:31.445
They knew and we knew
that it wasn\'t really military,

00:45:31.512 --> 00:45:37.084
what we really wanted was just
to explore the universe.

00:45:38.152 --> 00:45:40.488
-At Project Orion\'s headquarters,

00:45:40.554 --> 00:45:43.958
there was a round cafeteria
just about the same size

00:45:44.125 --> 00:45:45.493
as the base of the rocket.

00:45:45.793 --> 00:45:48.729
Dyson and physicist Ted Taylor used

00:45:48.796 --> 00:45:52.299
to imagine the rocket standing
in the courtyard ready to go.

00:45:55.102 --> 00:45:59.240
- In those days, we were thinking
in terms of huge manned expeditions.

00:46:01.342 --> 00:46:03.644
We planned to have 50 people
on board this ship

00:46:03.711 --> 00:46:06.046
and live on Mars for five years
or something like that.

00:46:06.580 --> 00:46:09.083
Ted would certainly go along
as Chief Scientist

00:46:09.116 --> 00:46:10.751
and I would have been very happy to go.

00:46:13.087 --> 00:46:15.289
There was always a question,
\"What about the family?\"

00:46:15.356 --> 00:46:16.791
You\'d probably leave them,

00:46:16.824 --> 00:46:21.595
you\'d be leaving them behind
for five years or so.

00:46:21.629 --> 00:46:23.898
That was a little bit of a problem.

00:46:24.031 --> 00:46:27.268
I think at that time,
I was young and irresponsible.

00:46:28.536 --> 00:46:30.805
I didn\'t think that would be a fatal flaw.

00:46:46.053 --> 00:46:48.222
Each of us had our favorite places to go.

00:46:49.990 --> 00:46:52.726
I was particularly interested in Salinas,

00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:54.562
which is one of the moons of Saturn.

00:46:56.130 --> 00:46:59.967
- Orion\'s mission might be
delayed for a century or two

00:47:00.167 --> 00:47:03.204
because of a meeting
that was taking place in Vienna.

00:47:03.737 --> 00:47:07.141
Khrushchev and Kennedy
were discussing limitations

00:47:07.174 --> 00:47:09.577
on nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.

00:47:10.411 --> 00:47:12.713
The Americans were under
pressure back home

00:47:13.180 --> 00:47:15.516
for a treaty that would
put an end to fallout.

00:47:16.784 --> 00:47:20.754
The baby teeth campaign
had driven home a new message

00:47:20.821 --> 00:47:23.657
about the movement of radiation
through the food chain,

00:47:23.858 --> 00:47:27.428
and it documented the buildup
of strontium in children.

00:47:28.562 --> 00:47:31.232
-What was happening was that the senators

00:47:31.265 --> 00:47:33.601
were getting letters from mothers

00:47:34.635 --> 00:47:38.939
saying they didn\'t want their kids
to be exposed to strontium-90.

00:47:39.874 --> 00:47:44.111
What impressed them was that
strontium-90 was properly spelled.

00:47:46.647 --> 00:47:49.884
In other words, they got the sense

00:47:49.950 --> 00:47:55.823
they were dealing not with protesters
simply but informed protesters.

00:47:57.124 --> 00:48:00.794
- With the stroke of a pen,
Orion\'s fate was sealed.

00:48:02.196 --> 00:48:04.331
-Once you had the atmospheric test band,

00:48:04.398 --> 00:48:09.069
and Orion was declared illegal,

00:48:09.136 --> 00:48:12.639
and that was it because
you weren\'t allowed either bombs

00:48:12.640 --> 00:48:14.508
in the atmosphere or bombs in space.

00:48:15.042 --> 00:48:16.343
That\'s about it.

00:48:16.410 --> 00:48:19.513
It\'s amazing because it lasted
as long as it did.

00:48:20.915 --> 00:48:24.218
- Concern about fallout grounded
the atomic rocket.

00:48:24.718 --> 00:48:28.022
If the trend continued,
Plowshare could be next.

00:48:29.723 --> 00:48:32.927
- People started worrying about
radioactivity and radioactivity.

00:48:32.993 --> 00:48:37.765
Moving mountains didn\'t seem
to appeal to too many people.

00:48:38.632 --> 00:48:41.268
-Nuclear excavation was still allowed

00:48:41.402 --> 00:48:44.471
under the Test-Ban Treaty
but that could change.

00:48:44.939 --> 00:48:48.475
Even some of Teller\'s colleagues
were having second thoughts.

00:48:49.576 --> 00:48:53.714
- My attitude was
if you\'d really don\'t know

00:48:54.048 --> 00:48:55.749
that something is harmful,

00:48:56.016 --> 00:48:58.752
you don\'t stand in the way of progress.

00:48:59.153 --> 00:49:02.323
Now, I cannot do anything
other than to say

00:49:02.356 --> 00:49:05.826
if you have Nuremberg trials
for everyone that was ever involved,

00:49:06.026 --> 00:49:08.696
certainly, I would have
deserved one for saying

00:49:08.762 --> 00:49:09.997
that if you don\'t know,

00:49:10.097 --> 00:49:14.902
you go ahead because between
statements like that in 1957

00:49:15.069 --> 00:49:21.208
to the time post \'63, I had changed
completely in my view as to,

00:49:21.275 --> 00:49:25.679
\"How could I be so dumb
as to think of a philosophy

00:49:25.846 --> 00:49:29.883
that you go ahead until
somebody proves it\'s bad?\"

00:49:30.918 --> 00:49:32.519
-Teller fought back.

00:49:32.653 --> 00:49:35.856
He gave his word that Plowshare
understood the dangers

00:49:36.056 --> 00:49:37.358
and would manage them.

00:49:38.158 --> 00:49:43.097
- From the very beginning,
the objection was

00:49:44.465 --> 00:49:47.134
that we cannot have these exposures

00:49:47.334 --> 00:49:51.505
without also producing
a lot of radioactivity.

00:49:53.507 --> 00:49:58.245
The question was,
would that radioactivity be very harmful?

00:50:01.415 --> 00:50:02.883
My answer to that question

00:50:02.950 --> 00:50:06.387
is it would be harmful
unless you\'re careful.

00:50:07.588 --> 00:50:10.124
- Teller and the nuclear industry
as a whole,

00:50:10.657 --> 00:50:15.229
offered the calm voice of reason
to a public that was wary of the avenue.

00:50:19.800 --> 00:50:25.005
- It is nice to be frightened
for the new forces

00:50:25.572 --> 00:50:27.441
that we have found.

00:50:28.375 --> 00:50:33.113
We must understand
how to use these things.

00:50:33.714 --> 00:50:38.152
We must not get frightened
of our own shadows

00:50:38.652 --> 00:50:42.890
as we did in this hysteria about fallout.

00:50:45.259 --> 00:50:50.464
We must see that
all of us get familiar

00:50:51.498 --> 00:50:54.935
with this rapidly changing
technological world.

00:50:56.136 --> 00:51:03.110
It has among its rewards,
a better life, a comfortable life.

00:51:04.845 --> 00:51:09.683
- Along with persuasion, Teller offered
new and improved explosives.

00:51:10.551 --> 00:51:15.589
This 1968 model promised
99% less radiation.

00:51:17.758 --> 00:51:21.495
Five of them were used all
in a row for this test in Nevada.

00:51:25.032 --> 00:51:28.869
The result was a neat trench
perfect for Panama

00:51:29.670 --> 00:51:32.005
and radiation levels were down.

00:51:33.307 --> 00:51:38.679
- Our steady work gives
one certain expectation,

00:51:39.313 --> 00:51:44.184
we are perfecting our tools,
we are reading our tools

00:51:44.751 --> 00:51:48.789
for the association
with radioactive danger.

00:51:49.590 --> 00:51:54.194
The time is not distant
when such explosions

00:51:54.361 --> 00:51:57.764
can be made for the benefit of mankind.

00:51:58.732 --> 00:52:03.537
- At where radiation was released,
Plowshare promised to keep track of it.

00:52:04.238 --> 00:52:08.041
A whole new field
of atmospheric modeling was invented.

00:52:09.276 --> 00:52:11.979
A modern version of this program shows

00:52:12.045 --> 00:52:16.683
how the path of the fallout can be
predicted step by step in seconds.

00:52:18.285 --> 00:52:21.021
A three-megaton blast
for the Panama Project

00:52:21.155 --> 00:52:24.391
would send the cloud up
to 22,000 meters,

00:52:24.491 --> 00:52:27.594
where the wind would
carry it out over the ocean.

00:52:29.763 --> 00:52:33.534
The end result was the footprint
of the fallout, around it,

00:52:33.634 --> 00:52:37.738
Plowshare would create a safety zone
until the radiation cooled.

00:52:38.372 --> 00:52:43.143
For Panama, this meant moving 30,000
San Blas people away

00:52:43.177 --> 00:52:45.479
from the new canal for up to a year.

00:52:46.513 --> 00:52:48.682
-If you keep away people from the site,

00:52:48.849 --> 00:52:52.286
for an appropriate not very long period,

00:52:53.253 --> 00:52:57.758
and not very big areas,
you could get away

00:52:57.791 --> 00:53:05.399
with radiations comparable
to natural radiation sources.

00:53:06.200 --> 00:53:10.337
- Just who the hell
has the right to decide

00:53:10.404 --> 00:53:15.509
that you shall take a dose of radiation
for this Plowshare Project?

00:53:16.143 --> 00:53:21.081
Who\'s got the right to tell them
San Blas Indians in Panama

00:53:21.148 --> 00:53:22.816
that they ought to take some dose

00:53:22.883 --> 00:53:25.519
and somebody should figure out
or did figure out

00:53:25.619 --> 00:53:27.454
what will be the dose for these people

00:53:27.521 --> 00:53:29.890
who were moved away a little distance.

00:53:30.724 --> 00:53:34.127
That\'s just a violation
of human rights.

00:53:34.761 --> 00:53:40.400
- The question of what
the calculated risk of cancer

00:53:40.667 --> 00:53:48.308
would be from the dose
was really not very clear at that time.

00:53:49.309 --> 00:53:57.309
The way the dose regulations
were developed were very crude.

00:53:59.853 --> 00:54:06.159
In any case, everyone knew
that the more radiation you had,

00:54:07.227 --> 00:54:12.966
the greater the danger of cancer,
and that\'s enough for most people.

00:54:13.834 --> 00:54:17.771
- In America, the radiation debate
refused to cool down.

00:54:18.472 --> 00:54:21.108
In Russia, another huge canal project

00:54:21.174 --> 00:54:24.011
was just getting started
in the forests of Siberia.

00:54:24.544 --> 00:54:27.547
There were no arguments
and no public resistance.

00:54:28.749 --> 00:54:31.218
One reason for this was secrecy.

00:54:34.488 --> 00:54:37.157
-While we were conducting that program,

00:54:38.025 --> 00:54:39.826
nothing was made public.

00:54:42.296 --> 00:54:45.599
When we knew where
an explosion would take place,

00:54:46.166 --> 00:54:50.270
we would quietly negotiate
with the top people of that region.

00:54:52.973 --> 00:54:56.443
We\'d get their green light
for conducting the experiment.

00:54:59.546 --> 00:55:02.015
The secrecy was rather high.

00:55:03.884 --> 00:55:06.586
-The Russian canal project was an example

00:55:06.620 --> 00:55:09.589
of geographical engineering
on a big scale.

00:55:10.023 --> 00:55:13.794
Nuclear excavation would
divert a river in Siberia

00:55:13.960 --> 00:55:17.864
and send itself to help
refill the Caspian Sea.

00:55:19.499 --> 00:55:23.036
They would do it
with low radiation explosives.

00:55:34.348 --> 00:55:37.551
The result of the blast
was a list of new problems.

00:55:37.751 --> 00:55:42.022
The cloud of steam drove
the fallout high into the atmosphere.

00:55:42.656 --> 00:55:45.859
Radiation came down
in Europe and North America.

00:55:47.494 --> 00:55:51.198
The soft pulverized rock
collapsed back into the crater,

00:55:51.565 --> 00:55:53.333
leaving a shallow muddy lake.

00:55:55.068 --> 00:55:57.671
Similar problems could turn up in Panama.

00:55:58.372 --> 00:56:00.374
In the face of mounting problems,

00:56:00.640 --> 00:56:03.844
both countries put their
canal projects on hold.

00:56:04.311 --> 00:56:07.848
The dream of planetary
engineering was collapsing

00:56:09.049 --> 00:56:11.251
but at least their scientists
could finally

00:56:11.318 --> 00:56:13.086
get together and talk about it.

00:56:13.620 --> 00:56:17.023
The Russians were invited
to Nevada for a tour of the craters.

00:56:17.524 --> 00:56:22.295
The two sides negotiated a draft treaty
on peaceful nuclear explosions.

00:56:22.429 --> 00:56:25.866
They even considered
sharing bombs to prove

00:56:25.932 --> 00:56:28.568
that these were not military
tests in disguise.

00:56:29.870 --> 00:56:33.340
In the midst of the Cold War,
a kind of harmony emerged.

00:56:36.143 --> 00:56:41.081
- This one here is the occasion
of our delegation visiting Moscow

00:56:41.281 --> 00:56:44.751
and went, I believe, 1970.

00:56:45.786 --> 00:56:49.389
They told us that they
used the publications

00:56:49.489 --> 00:56:54.261
about our own work as a vehicle
to get more money for them.

00:56:54.394 --> 00:56:58.965
We were saying the same thing to them,

00:56:59.099 --> 00:57:04.037
saying, well, we told our Congress
all the wonderful things

00:57:04.137 --> 00:57:05.172
that you\'re doing.

00:57:06.339 --> 00:57:10.610
Here, we wanted to do those things
and we need more support

00:57:10.710 --> 00:57:12.145
and more money to do them.

00:57:12.312 --> 00:57:17.951
It was a two-way street as far
as the politics of it were concerned.

00:57:19.820 --> 00:57:24.090
- Now, both countries began
identical experiments underground.

00:57:24.291 --> 00:57:28.261
The shattering power of
the blast could release gas and oil

00:57:28.462 --> 00:57:30.163
or minerals trapped in the rock.

00:57:33.233 --> 00:57:36.336
For the Russians,
it was another practical project.

00:57:42.876 --> 00:57:46.146
For the Americans,
this was a chance to show off

00:57:46.246 --> 00:57:49.516
their new tools away
from the Nevada Test Site.

00:58:01.962 --> 00:58:08.401
-6, 5, 4 [foreign language] Showtime.

00:58:11.204 --> 00:58:12.204
Launch.

00:58:21.381 --> 00:58:25.652
- Some explosions
did produce more gas but up

00:58:25.719 --> 00:58:30.924
to 1000 explosions would be needed
to release any useful amounts of gas.

00:58:31.157 --> 00:58:36.396
That would be a tough sell
in the United States in the 1970s.

00:58:36.863 --> 00:58:40.700
-[chanting] No more nukes.

00:58:42.836 --> 00:58:46.640
- Now, it was Barry Commoner\'s turn
to be on the cover of Time.

00:58:47.507 --> 00:58:53.380
- Remember the day,
today the Solar Age was born.

00:58:53.480 --> 00:58:55.048
[crowd cheering]

00:58:58.585 --> 00:59:02.656
-The nuclear age died on that day.

00:59:03.423 --> 00:59:08.161
- I think the political support
for [?] just vanished in Washington.

00:59:11.331 --> 00:59:14.434
The administrative heads felt it

00:59:14.501 --> 00:59:17.938
was not a popular subject
for the administration to be for

00:59:18.104 --> 00:59:19.940
so they became against.

00:59:21.541 --> 00:59:24.978
-The Panama Project was abandoned in 1970.

00:59:26.580 --> 00:59:29.816
The rest of Plowshare
was canceled four years later.

00:59:30.317 --> 00:59:33.820
Teller\'s vision of planetary
engineering was dead.

00:59:34.888 --> 00:59:37.557
-I\'m biased but I think that what stopped

00:59:37.624 --> 00:59:44.831
the American program
was the clear public position

00:59:44.965 --> 00:59:52.965
that really has been unshakable,
that radiation is bad stuff.

00:59:54.474 --> 00:59:56.943
-For Plowshare, there was no justification

00:59:57.077 --> 01:00:00.380
because it wasn\'t a matter of life
and death whether we

01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:03.116
had a deep harbor
that Chariot was going to do.

01:00:03.216 --> 01:00:05.285
It wasn\'t a matter of life and death

01:00:05.385 --> 01:00:09.623
if we were going to fracture gas
in Gasbuggy

01:00:09.789 --> 01:00:15.695
in the Rocky Mountains area,
and thereby bring out gas

01:00:15.829 --> 01:00:18.865
that\'s contaminated with tritium
and with radon.

01:00:21.234 --> 01:00:23.903
None of these things were necessary.

01:00:24.070 --> 01:00:28.208
- Many of us felt that some
of the possibilities

01:00:28.308 --> 01:00:30.810
and concepts that we had advocated

01:00:30.977 --> 01:00:35.849
but never could do because
of political considerations,

01:00:37.150 --> 01:00:42.055
the Russians did do
and from how we could see

01:00:42.188 --> 01:00:45.792
or we were told at that time,
they did it very well.

01:00:47.861 --> 01:00:53.900
- The Soviets set off 135 explosions
compared to 15 for the Americans.

01:00:54.434 --> 01:00:58.838
Dozens of explosions
were used for seismic tests,

01:00:59.806 --> 01:01:04.678
gas and oil wells, pits for chemical waste
and other projects.

01:01:07.047 --> 01:01:13.186
The event that ended the Russian
program began on April 26, 1986,

01:01:13.386 --> 01:01:16.923
when a nuclear power plant
at Chernobyl caught fire

01:01:16.990 --> 01:01:18.725
and burned for more than a week.

01:01:20.126 --> 01:01:24.197
Ironically, the path of
the radioactive cloud was predicted

01:01:24.264 --> 01:01:26.933
and mapped by the same computer system

01:01:27.067 --> 01:01:30.470
that was first developed
for Plowshare\'s Panama Project.

01:01:32.038 --> 01:01:34.607
As the extent of the disasters sank in,

01:01:35.108 --> 01:01:37.977
it awakened an environmental
movement in Russia,

01:01:38.078 --> 01:01:41.548
and put an end
to the nuclear explosion program.

01:01:44.484 --> 01:01:47.754
- Chernobyl elicited
a very strong wave of fear

01:01:48.054 --> 01:01:50.490
of how terrible radioactivity was.

01:01:50.957 --> 01:01:53.560
This affected all the nuclear programs.

01:01:53.827 --> 01:01:55.628
That was the main reason.

01:01:58.932 --> 01:02:02.335
- We just stopped research
and explosions altogether

01:02:02.569 --> 01:02:07.707
because as you know, the situation
in Russia was extremely complicated.

01:02:12.579 --> 01:02:15.315
[?] became extremely active in politics.

01:02:16.149 --> 01:02:19.552
It was also the time when
there were active negotiations

01:02:19.652 --> 01:02:21.087
on nuclear disarmament.

01:02:24.090 --> 01:02:27.360
There was really no funding,
that is why we stopped.

01:02:31.531 --> 01:02:34.633
- Back in Alaska,
there was one final chapter

01:02:34.634 --> 01:02:36.569
in the story of Project Chariot.

01:02:36.936 --> 01:02:41.274
The secret radiation experiment
was uncovered 30 years later.

01:02:43.910 --> 01:02:48.448
According to reports, the amount
of radiation used here was small,

01:02:48.615 --> 01:02:51.384
similar to what is used in hospital tests

01:02:51.718 --> 01:02:54.754
but the government agreed
to clean it up anyway.

01:02:59.025 --> 01:03:02.562
Here and throughout Alaska,
other contaminants remained

01:03:02.762 --> 01:03:06.132
from atmospheric testing
even from Chernobyl,

01:03:06.466 --> 01:03:10.503
and from industrial chemicals
that have infiltrated the food chain.

01:03:13.439 --> 01:03:17.143
- It makes you mad inside when you
start thinking about this kind of stuff

01:03:18.678 --> 01:03:21.447
because we\'re living with it,
we\'re living proof.

01:03:21.981 --> 01:03:26.052
There\'s so many deaths in the community,

01:03:26.319 --> 01:03:29.923
every person that died
never died by accident.

01:03:30.123 --> 01:03:35.695
They all die of cancer, cancer, cancer.

01:03:37.530 --> 01:03:41.134
- It\'s not right that these
things happen to our people.

01:03:44.237 --> 01:03:46.506
I wish I could just take this feeling away

01:03:46.573 --> 01:03:48.708
and just bury it and forget about it.

01:03:49.843 --> 01:03:55.682
- I\'ve seen my friends here
that shouldn\'t be here.

01:03:56.349 --> 01:04:01.120
They still should be in [?]
with their families and friends.

01:04:02.956 --> 01:04:06.893
- 40 years ago, the first
environmental study was made here.

01:04:07.060 --> 01:04:10.830
Today, the native village
of Point Hope would like

01:04:10.930 --> 01:04:13.867
to see another study
to determine what has happened

01:04:13.933 --> 01:04:18.037
to the Arctic even without
a nuclear blast at Cape Thompson.

01:04:20.340 --> 01:04:24.911
Much has changed in the past 40 years,
the Cold War has ended.

01:04:25.311 --> 01:04:27.180
The Soviet Union has dissolved.

01:04:28.181 --> 01:04:31.117
30 years after the first Soviet
American exchange,

01:04:31.484 --> 01:04:36.623
Milo Nordyke and Vadim Simonenko
are returning to the Nevada Test Site.

01:04:37.290 --> 01:04:39.525
Today, the Plowshare program

01:04:39.592 --> 01:04:42.495
and its Soviet counterpart
are nearly forgotten.

01:04:43.196 --> 01:04:44.998
Could they ever be revived?

01:04:48.268 --> 01:04:50.270
- We only worked a few years
on the program.

01:04:51.237 --> 01:04:52.338
It was just the beginning.

01:04:55.475 --> 01:04:59.412
All that we did in those decades
will belong to the future of mankind.

01:05:01.748 --> 01:05:03.416
Now that it has been invented,

01:05:03.516 --> 01:05:07.453
it may find all kinds of uses
in the future in the next millennium.

01:05:07.654 --> 01:05:09.522
Like the invention of the wheel,

01:05:09.756 --> 01:05:13.026
it just keeps rolling along
in all kinds of ways.

01:05:14.160 --> 01:05:22.160
- I just fear that wit
of the human conceit of thinking

01:05:24.504 --> 01:05:32.504
that human beings
are entitled to create elements

01:05:33.880 --> 01:05:41.154
that have not been
in the ecosystem before, like plutonium,

01:05:41.421 --> 01:05:45.591
and then say it\'s business as usual.

01:05:45.825 --> 01:05:50.997
I just did it because it was Tuesday
and it was very convenient.

01:05:51.531 --> 01:05:59.531
The enormous moral burden
and ethical burden of this seemed

01:06:00.773 --> 01:06:03.643
to be so unrecognized.

01:06:05.278 --> 01:06:09.782
- 925 nuclear explosions
took place here,

01:06:10.016 --> 01:06:11.951
most of them for the military.

01:06:13.519 --> 01:06:15.588
Today, the site is quiet.

01:06:16.622 --> 01:06:20.026
Security is reduced
to a few hired guards.

01:06:25.465 --> 01:06:28.101
-I look at Plowshare as something

01:06:30.036 --> 01:06:37.310
that will be re-established
if and only if the person,

01:06:37.343 --> 01:06:42.915
the anti-scientific trend,
the present trend to be afraid

01:06:43.016 --> 01:06:44.717
of anything that is you.

01:06:45.785 --> 01:06:48.087
If that can be brought to an end.

01:06:49.288 --> 01:06:54.093
- Might be a future if we first
have everybody decerebrated.

01:06:54.193 --> 01:06:55.762
[music]

01:07:06.773 --> 01:07:10.343
- There\'s nothing that nuclear
explosions can do in the way

01:07:10.410 --> 01:07:14.647
of digging holes that you can\'t do
without nuclear explosions.

01:07:14.680 --> 01:07:17.040
It\'s only it takes a little longer
and costs a little more.

01:07:18.084 --> 01:07:21.187
There\'s nothing indispensable about bombs.

01:07:22.522 --> 01:07:23.923
I think the only thing bombs

01:07:23.990 --> 01:07:26.325
can do that nothing else can do
is something like Orion.

01:07:34.634 --> 01:07:36.102
-Well, here we are.

01:07:38.371 --> 01:07:43.209
- The 1996 Test-Ban Treaty put
an end to all nuclear tests

01:07:43.342 --> 01:07:45.178
by the Russians and the Americans,

01:07:45.344 --> 01:07:47.880
but that\'s not the end of the story.

01:07:50.583 --> 01:07:55.655
- Here, I should mention that
Test-Ban Treaty said that in 10 years,

01:07:55.855 --> 01:07:58.991
we could discuss resuming
peaceful explosions.

01:08:00.460 --> 01:08:04.597
This is a good idea,
we should consider it.

01:08:07.900 --> 01:08:10.236
-Well, there it is.

01:08:12.004 --> 01:08:13.906
Show your face a little bit.

01:08:14.107 --> 01:08:15.374
That\'s pretty much the sun.

01:08:16.609 --> 01:08:18.711
-Peaceful nuclear explosions

01:08:18.811 --> 01:08:21.914
and geographical engineering
may never return,

01:08:22.181 --> 01:08:25.618
at least in the form that Edward Teller
first proposed them.

01:08:26.185 --> 01:08:31.023
The issues that were raised remain
and are reborn in the debate

01:08:31.057 --> 01:08:34.427
about new technologies
like biological engineering.

01:08:34.794 --> 01:08:40.266
- One of the clear results
of the development

01:08:40.366 --> 01:08:48.366
of modern technology has been
a demand to make very sure

01:08:50.409 --> 01:08:52.979
that anything new is not harmful.

01:08:54.347 --> 01:08:56.916
That has helped to limit

01:08:57.550 --> 01:09:03.189
in an unreasonably strict way
the use even of the field reactors,

01:09:04.524 --> 01:09:10.062
but it is a trend, which has spread
all across applied science.

01:09:11.664 --> 01:09:17.603
The example that I like to quote
is a modern example of cloning.

01:09:18.638 --> 01:09:25.144
Had cloning been found effective
as it has been recently found,

01:09:25.945 --> 01:09:32.718
had that occurred 60 years ago,
it would have been treated

01:09:32.885 --> 01:09:34.787
as a great discovery.

01:09:35.254 --> 01:09:43.254
- The stew that people now getting
to about genetic engineering

01:09:43.596 --> 01:09:51.003
and those things,
gene therapy, in many ways,

01:09:51.103 --> 01:09:57.210
I would think is not unrelated
to the fact that the moral issues

01:09:57.310 --> 01:10:01.447
of nuclear energy have
never been properly resolved.

01:10:01.647 --> 01:10:09.322
- There was a lesson
that is exemplified really,

01:10:09.455 --> 01:10:16.395
by the history of the whole atomic era
that we haven\'t learned.

01:10:19.232 --> 01:10:22.401
It may turn out to be even more dangerous

01:10:24.437 --> 01:10:29.508
than the threat of a nuclear catastrophe.

01:10:30.476 --> 01:10:33.112
This would be a biological one.

01:10:34.480 --> 01:10:39.418
- It is a question of responsibility
to the biosphere.

01:10:40.052 --> 01:10:45.124
If not take individually and collectively,

01:10:45.891 --> 01:10:50.796
nature comes back to test, we see it [?].

01:10:50.896 --> 01:10:53.232
[music]