I took Professor Wellerstein's class it was super interesting. For my final project I researched some of the peaceful nuke ideas, and this Israeli canal was discussed in that class.
The US had an entire program dedicated to a bunch of different applications of nuclear bombs that were not blowing up cities called Project Plowshare[1]. Some of the proposed ideas were the above second canal, another was a type of "fracking" to release natural gas, yet another was a way to create a new protected port (for military purposes)
there was also a similar program in the USSR called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy [2]. They had similar ideas, but the big achievement was closing two oil wells that could not be conventionally capped. so they detonated nuclear bombs adjacent to the well which physically blocked the well.
I would highly recommend checking out Wellerstein's blog [3]. tons of cool write ups about different aspects of nuclear technology and their history. Another fun thing he made, the Nuke Map [4]
"No no we're not violating the test ban treaty, we're just digging a canal 1,000 miles from the Warsaw line with nuclear weapons. You know, international trade and all. Nothing to see here, move along"
Would the PNTBT have even mattered? According to wikipedia it banned all tests except those underground - which arguably this excavation would have been.
Sure. Both the USSR and the USA had "peaceful" nuclear programs until the 1996 PNE treaty, which banned those as well and was also when this canal project was declassified.
Could you imagine someone taking these programs exclusively on good faith? "I don't see how placing hundreds of warheads near Moscow could possibly be related to first strike strategies. This all looks perfectly normal. Israel isn't America's Cuba in cold war politics, what kind of crisis could possibly arise from the placement of these warheads?"
Some day our ancestors will find all this cold war stuff hilarious.
The Cuban Missile Crisis precipitated a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear ballistic missiles from Turkey, but the U.S. kept its nuclear gravity bombs at Incirlik Air Base, which remain there today.[1] I don't think storing nuclear bombs in Israel would have been considered a substantial change in posture considering that Turkey, unlike Israel, actually bordered the Soviet Union.
It'd be interesting to know roughly how much energy it'd take - and thereby how much uranium it would take - to simply build a lot of electrically-powered heavy equipment and dig the same, hypothesized canal using nuclear power.
I very strongly suspect it would take vastly less uranium to just dig the canal normally, and the uranium certainly wouldn't have to be as highly enriched, and it could be reprocessed rather than thrown up in the atmosphere...
Why so complex? Just hook your diggers up to the nearest high-voltage distribution line, similar to how the Bagger 288 operates (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288) and feed the grid with a nuclear plant.
For what it's worth, even this massive beast, one of the world's largest man made machines, uses "only" 16 MW of electrical power, about twice the power a high-speed ICE 3 train needs.
You also need to figure out how to get power to the machines. I'm imagining a canal dug by excavators on centenary like electric trains (but higher). When done leave the wires in place and make ships turn off the engines for electric power.
It seems to have worked pretty well aside from the obvious radioactive fallout problem. They successfully turned a dry river bed into a lake that still exists today.
> "the current external γ-ray dose rate to a human from the contaminations associated with the 'Taiga' experiment was between 9 and 70 μSv [micro-Sieverts] per week". The report also recommends periodic monitoring of the site was recommended. In comparison, typical exposure from naturally occurring background radiation is about 3mSv per year, or 57μSv per week
I would think this canal would pose quite a threat to the region’s aquifers, just from the presence of seawater, regardless of any radioactive pollution. The mountain aquifer extends south to Be’er Sheva, close to the route shown here.
Richard Feynman has anecdotes on how the AEC was soliciting cockamamie ideas for applications of nuclear explosives to civil engineering to patent at Los Alamos. They weren't very serious, although.
1958 Project Chariot[1] proposed creating a new bay in Alaska by use of nukes.
Originated out of Project Plowshare, an attempt to find peaceful use of nukes. Like trying to dig up oil/natural gas, for example! Unlike USSR, the US did not focus on radioactively safer fission-only reaction devices, and generally caused a ruckus. Terminated 1977.
I feel like the economic benefits of not detonating a little over a gigaton of nuclear explosives in your country outweighs the benefits of having a (highly irradiated) competitor to the Suez Canal. Would you even be able to move food through this proposed canal safely?
For food, the lingering radiation might even be considered a feature not a bug.
Irradiation of food is a useful method of preservation which extends safety and shelf life and does not make foods radioactive or noticeably change the taste texture or appearance... [0][1]
Whether the lingering radiation would create a sufficient dose, and sufficiently consistent and accurate, for the desired preservative effect is another question. But, it might be an advantage that could plausibly support an upcharge for transport of foods (tho perhaps require lead-lined crew quarters), or a preferred route vs non-irradiating Suez canal?
I have no idea if the scale of radiation is anywhere close enough for this to be anything but a joke of a sidetrack, but I don't think the food transport would be harmed... the crew, another story.
I’m curious how these clean bombs differ from neutron bombs (which I thought had a point of minimizing leftovers by using everything up in the neutron blast)?
I believe that is because they require a fission component in order to set of the fusion component. If they could obtain fusion without the fission detonator, it would be clean from what I've read.
Without the fission component they would be cleaner, but not clean.
All the existing thermonuclear bombs use fusion reactions between various isotopes of hydrogen and lithium and all those reactions produce an intense flux of neutrons, which will generate large quantities of radioactive isotopes in the surrounding environment.
The same problem of the neutrons exist with most projects of getting energy from fusion, which also produce radioactive waste, even if less than fission reactors.
Hindsight is always 20/20, we all know now that it would of been a bad idea. I do think this, along with Project Orion, are great thinking by people to utilize terribly destructive weapons for outside the box peaceful solutions.
Again we know now this would be bad and the consequences would not outweigh the benefits. I do think it is vital to have this kind of thinking (I mean outside the box). I think some people may find it crazy that this was even thought of, however I find is an interesting read.
The US had an entire program dedicated to a bunch of different applications of nuclear bombs that were not blowing up cities called Project Plowshare[1]. Some of the proposed ideas were the above second canal, another was a type of "fracking" to release natural gas, yet another was a way to create a new protected port (for military purposes)
there was also a similar program in the USSR called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy [2]. They had similar ideas, but the big achievement was closing two oil wells that could not be conventionally capped. so they detonated nuclear bombs adjacent to the well which physically blocked the well.
I would highly recommend checking out Wellerstein's blog [3]. tons of cool write ups about different aspects of nuclear technology and their history. Another fun thing he made, the Nuke Map [4]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat... [3]: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ [4]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/