Editing Project Plowshare (section)

==Impacts, opposition and economics==
Operation Plowshare "started with great expectations and high hopes". Planners believed that the projects could be completed safely, but there was less confidence that they could be completed more economically than conventional methods. Moreover, there was insufficient public and Congressional support for the projects. [[Operation Chariot (1958)|Projects Chariot]] and Coach were two examples where technical problems and environmental concerns prompted further feasibility studies which took several years, and each project was eventually canceled.<ref name="Executive Summary"/>

Citizen groups voiced concerns and opposition to some of the Plowshare tests.  There were concerns that the blast effects from the Schooner explosion could dry up active wells or trigger an earthquake. There was opposition to both Rulison and Rio Blanco tests because of possible radioactive gas flaring operations and other environmental hazards.<ref name="Executive Summary"/> In a 1973 article, ''[[Time magazine|Time]]'' used the term "Project Dubious" to describe Operation Plowshare.<ref name="Dubious"/>

There were negative impacts from several of Project Plowshare’s 27 nuclear explosions, primarily those conducted in the project's infancy and those that were very high in explosive yield.

On Project Gnome and the Sedan test:<ref name=bks2011>{{Citation | first = Benjamin K | last = Sovacool | author-link = Benjamin K. Sovacool | year = 2011 | title = Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power: A Critical Global Assessment of Atomic Energy | publisher= [[World Scientific]] | pages = 171–2}}</ref>
{{Blockquote |Project Gnome vented radioactive steam over the very press gallery that was called to confirm its safety. The next blast, a 104-kiloton detonation at Yucca Flat, Nevada, displaced 12 million tons of soil and resulted in a radioactive dust cloud that rose {{convert|12000|ft|disp=sqbr||}} and plumed toward the Mississippi River. Other consequences – blighted land, relocated communities, tritium-contaminated water, radioactivity, and fallout from debris being hurled high into the atmosphere – were ignored and downplayed until the program was terminated in 1977, due in large part to public opposition.<ref name=bks2011 />}}

Project Plowshare shows how something intended to improve national security can unwittingly do the opposite if it fails to fully consider the social, political, and environmental consequences. It also “underscores that public resentment and opposition can stop projects in their tracks”.<ref name=bks2011/>
[[File:US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.svg|thumb|United States and Soviet Union/Russia nuclear stockpiles. The slow down in the production of nuclear weapons, beginning in the late 1970s in the US, greatly impacted on the economic calculations of peaceful uses of nuclear detonations.]]

The [[social scientist]] [[Benjamin Sovacool]] contends that the main problem with oil and gas stimulation, which many considered the most promising economic use of nuclear detonations, was that the produced oil and gas was radioactive, which caused consumers to reject it and this was ultimately the program's downfall.<ref name=bks2011 /> Oil and gas are sometimes [[Naturally occurring radioactive material|''naturally'' radioactive]] to begin with, however, and the industry is set up to deal with oil and gas that contain radioactive contaminants.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://aoghs.org/technology/project-gasbuggy/|title="Gasbuggy" tests Nuclear Fracking – American Oil & Gas Historical Society|date=December 4, 2015}}</ref> Historian Dr. Michael Payne notes that it was primarily changing public opinion, in response to events such as the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]], that drove the protests,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.innovationalberta.com/article.php?articleid=92|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070824172227/http://www.innovationalberta.com/article.php?articleid=92|archive-date=August 24, 2007|title=Innovation Alberta: Article Details|date=August 24, 2007}}</ref> court cases and general hostility that ended the oil and gas stimulation efforts. Furthermore, as the years went by without further development and production of nuclear weapons slowed, interest in peaceful applications waned in the 1950s–60s. Cheaper, non-nuclear stimulation techniques suitable for most US gas fields were developed in the following years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.osti.gov/opennet/reports/plowshar.pdf|title=Plowshare Program Executive Summary, pp. 4–5}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.elmada.com/wagon/WWS005Projects.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040706025511/http://www.elmada.com/wagon/WWS005Projects.htm|archive-date=July 6, 2004|title=elmada.com/wagon: Nuclear Stimulation Projects|date=July 6, 2004}}</ref>

As a point of comparison, the most [[Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy|successful and profitable nuclear stimulation effort]] that did not result in customer product contamination issues was the 1976 Project Neva on the Sredne-Botuobinsk gas field in the [[Soviet Union]], made possible by multiple cleaner stimulation explosives, favorable rock strata and the possible creation of an underground contaminant storage cavity.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_uranium27.htm|title=The Soviet Program for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions|website=www.bibliotecapleyades.net}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/238468.pdf |title=Milo D. Nordyke, 2000. peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) in the Soviet Union over the period 1965 to 1988. |access-date=July 22, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161223024850/http://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/238468.pdf |archive-date=December 23, 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Soviet Union retains the record for the cleanest/lowest [[Nuclear weapon design|fission-fraction]] nuclear devices so far demonstrated.

The public records for devices that produced the highest proportion of their yield via fusion-only reactions, and therefore created orders of magnitude smaller amounts of [[Fission products|long-lived fission products]] as a result, are the USSR's [[Peaceful nuclear explosions]] of the 1970s, with the three detonations that excavated part of [[Pechora–Kama Canal]], being cited as 98% fusion each in the ''Taiga'' test's three 15-[[kiloton]] explosive yield devices, that is, a total fission fraction of 0.3 [[kiloton]]s in a 15 kt device.<ref>[http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_uranium27.htm ''The Soviet Program for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions''] by Milo D. Nordyke. Science & Global Security, 1998, Volume 7, pp. 1–117</ref> In comparison, the next three high fusion-yielding devices were all much too high in total explosive yield for oil and gas stimulation: the 50-megaton [[Tsar Bomba]] achieved a yield 97% derived from fusion,<ref>[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-5.html 4.5 Thermonuclear Weapon Designs and Later Subsections]. Nuclearweaponarchive.org. Retrieved on May 1, 2011.</ref> while in the US, the 9.3-megaton [[Operation Hardtack I|Hardtack Poplar]] test is reported as 95.2%,<ref>[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Hardtack1.html Operation Hardtack I]. Nuclearweaponarchive.org. Retrieved on May 1, 2011.</ref> and the 4.5-megaton [[Operation Redwing|Redwing Navajo]] test as 95% derived from fusion.<ref>[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Redwing.html Operation Redwing]. Nuclearweaponarchive.org. Retrieved on May 1, 2011.</ref>