Editing Project Chariot (section)

== History ==
A 1957 meeting at the [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory|Lawrence Radiation Laboratory]] (LRL) proposed a program to use nuclear explosives for industrial development projects. This proposal became the basis for [[Project Plowshare]], administered by the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission]]. Chariot was to be the first Plowshare project, and was imagined as a way to show how larger projects, such as a sea-level [[Panama Canal]], or a sea-level [[Nicaragua Canal]], might be accomplished.<ref name="O'Neill 1989"/>

The plan was championed by LRL director and nuclear scientist [[Edward Teller]], who traveled throughout Alaska touting the harbor as an important economic development for America's newest state. Teller promoted a study, contracted by LRL, that proposed development of coal deposits in Northern Alaska. Teller and the LRL proposed the harbor as a port for coal shipment, even though the harbor and surrounding Chukchi Sea would be frozen for nine months of the year. The mines themselves would have been on the far side of the [[Brooks Range]], requiring a railroad and storage facilities for the coal waiting to be shipped.<ref name="O'Neill 1989">{{cite journal | title = Project Chariot: how Alaska Escaped Nuclear Excavation | journal = [[Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]] | date = December 1989 | first = Dan | last = O'Neill | volume = 45 | issue = 10| pages = 28–37 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=8wUAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28 |access-date = January 3, 2012| doi = 10.1080/00963402.1989.11459763 | bibcode = 1989BuAtS..45j..28O | url-access = subscription }}</ref>

As the plan developed, relatively small explosions in Nevada,<ref name="ONeill3" /> some previously planned, indicated that small blasts could accomplish much of the publicly-stated goals of the project with reduced releases of radioactive contamination. However, as Alaskan business leaders showed there was no economic justification for it, the project shifted to a more clearly avowed program for testing nuclear excavation in a remote location.<ref name="O'Neill 1989"/>

Alaskan political leaders, newspaper editors, president [[William Ransom Wood]] of the [[University of Alaska System|University of Alaska]], and even church groups all rallied in support of the detonation. Congress had passed the [[Alaska Statehood Act]] just a few weeks before. An editorial in the July 24, 1960 ''[[Fairbanks News-Miner|Fairbanks Daily News-Miner]]'' said, "We think the holding of a huge nuclear blast in Alaska would be a fitting overture to the new era which is opening for our state."<ref name="ONeill3" />