Operation Plowshare - Definition and Overview

Operation Plowshare was the overall American term for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes. It was coined in 1961, taken from from a biblical verse in the Book of Isaiah about turning swords into plowshares.

Proposed uses included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new waterway through Nicaragua, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and mining. More speculative uses included setting nuclear weapons off in underground caverns with the hope of creating steam which could then be used to generate electricity (tests indicated that the steam would be too radioactive for safe use, however). The plowshares operation closest to being carried out was the the planned Chariot blast which would have used hydrogen bombs to create an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska. It was never carried out due to concerns for the native populations and the fact that there was little potential use for the harbor to justify its risk and expense.

The use of nuclear weapons for civilian engineering purposes has never been applied in the United States, but it has been tested. These twenty-eight shots were conducted in conjunction with other, weapons-related, test series. These are annotated under the 'notes' column.

The individual tests were: