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The early days of the atomic era saw a broad push to use nuclear technology in as many diverse arenas as possible beyond weapons development. Used as a tool in both domestic and international policy, the United States
Atomic Energy Commission pushed to find different uses for nuclear technology. "Project Plowshare" was the name given by the Atomic Energy Commission to the project that sought "to find practical industrial and scientific uses for nuclear explosives." The Atomic Energy Commission could make the biblical leap to beat its "swords into plowshares" because the bomb was considered a sword.
In the forward to
Project Plowshare by Ralph Sanders, Willard F. Libby noted that
"Project Plowshare is both a policy and a means of fashioning weapons of destruction into tools of peace." Libby also noted:
In Plowshare we once again see the dual nature of technological development-evil when improperly used, benign when wisely and humanly used. Atomic energy, like any technology, is morally neuter; the arrangement within the atom is neither good nor bad. Atomic energy in a reactor is blessed with no greater spiritual value than the atomic energy in an explosion.
Either as a policy or as a means of fashioning weapons of destruction into tools of peace, Project Plowshare did not lack controversy. Plowshare's place in history came into place when the Soviet Union resumed nuclear weapon testing during the summer of 1961. Once the Soviet Union broke the test-ban treaty, the United States was free to restart their testing program and to start Project Plowshare experiments that had been held up for three years.
In some respects, Project Plowshare was an extension of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's
"Atoms for Peace" Program initialized on September 6, 1954. Standing in a Denver television studio, Eisenhower waved a radioactive magic wand over a counter. Once he waved it, "an automatically controlled power shovel … scooped up the symbolic shovelful of earth" at the site of the first commercial power plant being built in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. A year later, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Strauss flipped a switch, sending atomic power into the utility grid. The Atoms for Peace program promised "nuclear powered planes, trains, ships, and rockets; nuclear energy would genetically alter crops and preserve grains and fish." In his dedication to Atoms for Peace, USA 1958, Eisenhower noted that "We are learning that atomic energy is a unifying force when it is devoted to the cause of peace. It brings together nations whose scientists and engineers confer the benefits of discovery and technology on all mankind." Nuclear technology had made the 180-degree turn from being a weapon of destruction to a tool for the promotion of peace between nations. It also was a tool for the use of engineers, politicians, and businessmen, each eager to promote their use of nuclear technology as the latest innovation.
Project Plowshare would share the stage with Atoms for Peace. However, under Project Plowshare, nuclear weapons would be "used to dig harbors and canals, move mountains, and blast loose valuable mineral deposits." Between the Atoms for Peace program and Project Plowshare, the future of the atomic age was indeed bright. The policy to find and expand the peaceful uses of technology was going to benefit Americans.
One
of the bright spots in Plowshare's program, was the development of
Nuclear Stimulation Technology.
Continue:
Nuclear Stimulation
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