Better Living Through Nukes? 432
perkonis writes "So, you've got 23,000 nukes laying about and no one to use them on. What to do with them? Well, you blow up stuff for fun and profit. Some of the ideas range from good on paper (such as mining oil shale) to just downright bad (such as making a new Panama Canal). Making a big ditch by blowing up nukes — what could possibly go wrong?"
I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:5, Interesting)
blowing up geological faults to 'ease the tension'. Better a small slip than a full-blown earthquake.
Or maybe if it's just for fun, give it to the Mythbusters.
Security and Radioactivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:5, Informative)
And the radioactivity is really problematic for some of these tasks. For example, oil shale. That was studied a lot in the 70s, and last I saw, it was deemed infeasible because it'd leave the oil too radioactive to be usable.
Oh, and as for using any relevant amount of nuclear weapons on the surface at once -- say, the amount that would be exchanged between India and Pakistan in a nuclear war -- um, no. [wunderground.com] That would be a Bad Thing(TM).
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radio active waste hasn't stopped coal power plants, I would think as clean as we are able to burn oil now, sepearte out any heavy metal at the end would be easier than coal. Actually just mixing it into a pipeline seams pretty safe from what the article says about the lack of radioactivity in the low fissionable material bombs should make this a non-issue.
Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring meta [wikipedia.org]
Reality Check (Score:3, Interesting)
Coal contains trace amounts of uranium, typically at around 3ppm.
However ordinary soil contains trace amounts at concentrations ranging from between 1-5ppm.
Re:Reality Check (Score:5, Insightful)
The radioactivity in soil stays put, burning coal releases it into the air. If you live downwind of a coal power station you might want to borrow a Geiger counter and check out your garden (or not, if you prefer ignorance).
Unclear to Nuclear Physics (Score:5, Informative)
Things like radon that are radioactive, and created by uranium have a shelf life of 2 days. So basically if you separate out leftover uranium, in 2 days I would expect your extracted oil would be radiation free.
Sorry but this is completely wrong. First uranium itself is not very radioactive (although it is toxic). The half-life for U235/238 (what you find in a Uranium bomb) is 0.7/4.5 billion years respectively. This means that even in large non-critical lumps the radiation is low. Secondly radioactivity after a nuclear explosion comes from the fission products of Uranium (or what they very rapidly decay into) like Strontium, Xenon, Caesium etc. which have varying but generally medium half lives (of order decades). Radon is a decay product of Uranium (after several steps), not a fission product.
Finally radioactive nuclei, particularly heavy ones, usually decay into other radioactive nuclei. Hence the fact that one isotope of radon has a short half-life does not mean that "all the radioactivity" will be gone because there is a decay chain. For example Radon-222 which has a half-live of 3.8 days (there is no Radon isotope with a 2d half-life that I could find) will eventually decay into Lead-210 which has a half life of 22.3 years.
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You can be the first in line for the starving and dieing part.
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Yes I can!
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they will be looked after by companies hiring security guards.
And that is worse than the Russian military how?
Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.
Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.
Fearmongering will get us nowhere.
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:5, Funny)
and I don't trust your people more than the russian people.
The Hungarian army couldn't take over Heathrow Airport, so that's understandable.
Oh, you thought I was American?
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:4, Funny)
The Hungarian army couldn't take over Heathrow Airport, so that's understandable.
A lesser known fact is that they tried a few years ago, but are still waiting for their bags to arrive...
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:5, Funny)
IANYourL. This post is my rambling, not legal advice. Do not rely on this post for any reason.
And here I was, about to use your profound insight to make life changing decisions. Pompous ass.
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Fearmongering will get us nowhere.
I don't know about that. Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.
True, but to be fair so has the Catholic Church and every large political campaign ever ran.
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I don't know about that. The Bush Family and Dick Cheney have made many billions of dollars off of fearmongering.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about that. The ruling elite in the US have made many trillions of dollars off of fearmongering.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Why bother with local, specialized cases when you can acknowledge a general pattern of human social behavior?
Al Gore, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of them have just been using the main tool for getting a society to follow their leaders.
Al Gore (Score:5, Informative)
Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.
Al Gore has also made a lot from oil. He has had a long relationship and been an investor in Occidental Petroleum [ratical.org].
Falcon
Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score:4, Informative)
I really want to see a Nuke and have been dissapointed my entire life that I never have gotten the opportunity to see one.
It's not a Nuke, but Paks Nuclear Power Plant [atomeromu.hu] is open for viewing. AFAIK that's the only one on Earth where they actually let you see the reactor and the 70's style control room. It's kind of fun to see Soviet technology still working as intended.
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I think you found the one joke they forgot to include in Fallout 3.
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http://www.nuclearwasterecycling.com/ [nuclearwas...ycling.com]
Thank you for calling me uninformed. Now go read it.
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Is this the recycling scheme proposed by Ruggero Santilli, the "hadronic mechanics" theorist?
The same guy who invented MagneGas and MagneHydrogen, which are made of magnecules?
This is a person who was criticised by other scientists as having;
Many serious misinterpretations, and misunderstandings of the "data" presented... [the paper] creates some doubt as to whether [the author] actually knows the difference between a gas chromatograph (GC) and a mass spectrometer (MS).
Are you suggesting his method of recycling high-level nuclear waste is a credible solution to the waste problem?
If so, you're not merely uninformed. You're as crazy as a loon.
problems with nuclear power (Score:3, Informative)
2) nuclear waste remains deadly for 10,000 to 100,000 years.
I'll oppose nuclear power until it can be proven to be environmentally friendly, which I doubt will ever happen, but by reprocessing nuclear waste into more fuel the amount of waste and the length of tyme needed to store it can be significantly reduced.
Falcon
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The civilian sector already uses military grade controlled explosives for civilian uses. They just do so by asking the military to allow them to do so and to provide the materials and expertise to pull it off.
Just because a civilian use for it exists, doesn't mean that you let civilians do it themselves.
The final catch is that nuclear fuel is a finite resource, just like oil. You can just run around using it for all sorts of silly things unless you intend to run out of it. The main difference between pet
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Since the cold war, demand for uranium has dropped too. If we had more nuclear power plants, we'd have more mining capacity, and we'd have something that could bridge us over until widespread renewable energy adoption and/or fusion. (It's only 20 years away!!! Still...)
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:4, Funny)
Can we do that to California?
If a wide enough opening is made in the mountains between California and other desert states would it bring good climate change? If Arizona, Nevada, etc could be made lush I'd nuke 'em.
A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use it (Score:5, Insightful)
A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use it... shades of WarGames.
Nuclear weapons have solved the problem of national defense, but at a stiff price. In the past, there was always someone out there who thought that they could just come to your country or piece of ground, kick your ass, steal everything of value, rape your women, and turn your (and your women's) children into their slaves to buy, sell, fuck, or work to death as they please.
Hell, we even did it ourselves and got away with it for a long time. Your ancestors did also to your neighbors. And your neighbors did it to you. It's quite possible that you are thinking right now about doing it to someone.
It's not a bad idea, actually. You get all the benefits and you get to kill off all the assholes and bullies in your society that would make your life miserable if they weren't occupied by raging, raping, and pillaging someone else, somewhere else. Excuse me, I meant to say "turn all our brave boys into heroes or martyrs, proudly serving in our nation's defense..." Same thing.
However, there are some countries that no-one imagines or seriously plans to conquer and enslave. These countries have, at great expense, developed refrigerator-sized machines that convert hydrogen into helium in the most environmentally-insensitive way imaginable. When someone shows up at the border for a little bit of the old in-out, they get met with a few of these hydrogen-to-helium converters thrown their way, along with a few tossed through outer space to the folks back home.
What a mess. Basically the consequences of having to deal with having hydrogen-to-helium machines thrown your way far exceeds the joys and profits in ravishing and pillaging your neighbors. So you find something else to do. And we have world peace. Peace through machines. Not microprocessor-controlled dildos, or cool stereos playing groovy music, but through hydrogen bombs.
One small problem: If you have a few of these hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines, it's real easy to get your friends and neighbors to give you their stash and daughters. Without having to go through the trouble of violently taking it. Just go to their embassy with a list in one hand and picture of the H2H machine in the other. Don't say a word; they'll get the message.
So they want a few of the H2H machines themselves. And the more that there are around, the more likely that some one, somewhere, for some reason, under some God's direction, justified by some ancient holy book, is going to set them off. Which is bad for business.
So an elaborate game evolves. You pretend that you are going to use them if it were to happen that someone might assume that they could pretend to do something that would piss you off, if it were possible that it could ever happen.
And, success, you get world peace. Civilized people don't fuck with each other any more. Giant corporations can pretend that chickenshit things like trading MP3 files are a major issue, and other fantasies.
The only problem is when weirdos and fanatics get the H2H devices. And you don't know if they are going to be willing and able to play the 'pretend that we use them' game. So you can ignore them and hope for the best, as we do with nuclear powers like Israel and Japan ( please don't insult our intelligence by telling me that the Japanese don't have hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines), or you can threaten to kick their ass in advance if they cross a certain line that you and the other civilized nations have drawn in the sand (Pakistan and Korea). Or, if you're lucky, you can just buy them off and get them to surrender their H2H machines (and their U238 little brothers), like South Africa and the Ukraine.
Anyway, back to the point. You don't want to use the H2H converters for anyt
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Re:A weird weapon, it only works if you don't use (Score:5, Insightful)
> One small problem: If you have a few of these hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines, it's real easy to get your friends and neighbors to give you their stash and daughters. Without having to go through the trouble of violently taking it. Just go to their embassy with a list in one hand and picture of the H2H machine in the other. Don't say a word; they'll get the message.
So, the US hasn't fought a war, excuse me, armed conflict in the last 50 years?
Nuclear weapons aren't good for small things. They are an all-out-weapon. They may help avoiding an all-out war, as it is M.A.D., but do next to nothing in small cases. Any threat is void, if you can't realise it. The usage of tactical nukes would generate a diplomatic and economical outfall, which would far outweigh any positive benefit you might possibly expect from the usage of said weapon. Even the hint at using a nuclear weapon will create a backlash from other nations.
> please don't insult our intelligence by telling me that the Japanese don't have hydrogen-to-helium conversion machines
Aside from experimental reactors in laboratories? Or is that your euphemism for hydrogen bombs? If not going as far as questioning your intelligence, I have at least doubt your knowledge on foreign nations. Look up the Japan's non-nuclear policy [wikipedia.org]. It already created a severe discontent in the general populace, that the Japanese government allowed the US to dock a nuclear driven military vessel in a Japanese harbour.
IRC, the last notable Japanese politician that suggested in context of the build up of nuclear power in North Korea, it might be a good idea to have a own nuclear weapons had to resign due to public outrage.
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:5, Informative)
I am a geology student, studying seismology, and it is a personal pet peeve when someone says that a small earthquake will relive the pressure of a large fault. The force of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale*, which is a logarithmic scale. A difference of one magnitude on the scale is equivalent to 10 times the force. Lets say we had a fault that had built up the pressure for an 8.0. Let's also assume that with a single nuke you could create a small earthquake at a force of 3.0. This is a difference of 5 orders of magnitude, so 100 000 times the force, and you'd need 100 000 3.0 earthquakes to equal one 8.0 earthquake. Do you really wish to set off that many nukes?
Please do not say that a smallish earthquake is going to prevent a large one. To a geologist, this makes you sound about as stupid as the people who believe that California is going to fall off into the ocean the next time we have a large earthquake. http://www.usgs.gov/faq/list_faq_by_category/get_answer.asp?id=152 [usgs.gov]
*We use the moment magnitude scale for the most part these days, but most non-geologist are more familiar with the Richter scale. MMS is 30 times the force for one degree of magnitude.
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To a geologist, this makes you sound about as stupid as the people who believe that California is going to fall off into the ocean the next time we have a large earthquake.
Hey. We can hope, can't we?
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:4, Funny)
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Even worse, they had no way of knowing if they might accidentally cause a full out earthquake by the explosions, which would obviously defeat the purpose (and kill many people).
If we leave it be, an earthquake would happen anyways. It's just a matter of when. With the nuke method, "when" is a controllable variable. "When" can be "after we have warned everybody in the surrounding 300 miles incessantly for the past 6 months".
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:5, Interesting)
"When" can be "after we have warned everybody in the surrounding 300 miles incessantly for the past 6 months".
Just like the digital tv transition! Oh wait...
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:4, Funny)
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Oh sure, and then instead of nukes, we'll have a radioactive solar powered NUCLEAR MAN to come and lay waste to the world.
No thanks!
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just launch them into the Sun.
Perhaps we can launch all of the coal and oil on the planet into the sun as well. That should speed along the technology for the use of magic pixie dust for generation of electricity.
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except ... to actually do anything useful ... you have to detonate several kilometers under the surface where the friction thats preventing the movement is actually occurring, and where detonation will result in nothing getting anywhere near the surface.
There are however hundreds of other reasons why this won't work. One of the biggest being that as powerful as our nukes are, they aren't shit compared to the energy released in an earthquake of any size.
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There are however hundreds of other reasons why a nuclear bomb won't work. One of the biggest being that as powerful as our batteries and pushbuttons are, they aren't shit compared to the energy released in a nuclear explosion of any size. Oh...wait....
There's no physical law that says releasing stored p
Re:I don't know if someone proposed this but... (Score:4, Interesting)
And there's not much energy involved in a shout or explosion that sets off a avalanche, compared to the energy released during one. We already deliberately set off avalanches early in order to either limit the damage or to prevent loss of life by having it happen at a controlled time.
The general idea would be that having a 5.0 annually is better than a 6.0 once a decade.
Still, the science is nowhere developed enough. Problems I can think of off hand:
1. Need to identify the point under the 'most' strain, and how much extra energy is needed, where, to break that point. Or even find a lesser point that, once broken, will break more points, ending in an ultimately lower energy potential.
2. Need to ID just HOW strong the resulting earthquakes would be under this - we need to release enough energy to matter, but not so much we level the area. Preferably, the shocks would be minimal to no damage.
3. Along with 2, we need to ID where the new strain points are going to be, and the stress they'll be under, to verify that the chances of a dangerous earthquake will actually be reduced by our action. After all this, you'd resurvey, and start modeling again for the next shot.
All in all, it says to me that we need much improved maps of the earth in the area, and good supercomputer modeling programs.
We're a long way away from having to worry about where we'd get a nuke from to do this.
This is an old idea (Score:2)
Re:This is an old idea (Score:5, Funny)
"Radioactive waste is dangerous and toxic so we need a safe way of disposing of it without the possibility of it leaking into the ground. I propose pumping it into the ground."
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As are many of the items in use by people on a day to day basis.
Re:This is an old idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The testing in the 50's caused a noticeable legacy. Most of the test sites are still unsafe for human occupation, and the planets background radiation level still hasn't dropped to pre-nuke levels.
I don't have a problem with nuclear power plants. They have proven that they are more or less a safe (acceptable risk) use of the technology. The same can NOT be said for nuclear bombs. Air bursting causes most of the radioactive fallout to go into the super-sphere, but it comes down eventually, some if, if not all. Ground shots tend to destroy any local ecology and permanently irradiate environments. Read up on Bikini Atoll, and the Baker test.
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Not on a scale of tens of thousands of years.
Morbo says: Half-lives do not work like that!
The stuff that'll be around for "tens of thousands of years" is not that radioactive. It's the stuff that only hangs around for a few years that puts out a really dangerous amount of radiation. But, then, it's only dangerous for a few years.
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Pumping it into the ground 1500 feet down into the earth's crust in the middle of a tectonic plate and far below any water tables is perfectly safe. Leaving it above ground waiting for some weird freak accident to allow contaminates to somehow get into the water table is a tiny bit less so.
It should be noted though that the casks they use at US nuclear power plants to store spent rods are really really freakin' tough. So it's really more just a problem of the stuff taking up space and not having a permane
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Ideas (Score:5, Funny)
Been tried, major fail (Score:5, Informative)
It was tried back in the 60's with "project Plowshare". Blowing up new harbors, blowing up gas wells, etc, etc, etc. Did not pan out. Radioactive gas spewing into your home through the cooktop, not a big win. Radioactive dust and water from making a new harbor, not too keen either, and this was before peta and greenpeace et al.
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We just put peta and greenpeace in the soon to be harbor, then detonate the nuke.
Kill three birds with one stone.
Re:Been tried, major fail (Score:5, Funny)
What if these results in some sort of mutant PETA/Greenpeace/Harbor monster?! It might protest us to death!
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Kill three birds with one stone.
That depends on the type of bomb. Gun-type fission bombs use 2 "stones"
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Nuclear weapons can be built to have very low fallout.
It's not going to help with repurposing the stockpile, though. Also there is a history of bungling such things. We totally blew it with using a lot of stuff, like DDT, Asbestos, PCBs, etc - in each case, overuse and use where it was inappropriate, when we completely knew the risks.
Re:Been tried, major fail (Score:4, Informative)
"The natural gas work culminated in 1973 with the explosion of three 33-kiloton bombs thousands of feet underground in Rio Blanco, Colorado. The key problem was that the gas this produced had measurable amounts of radioactivity. Not surprisingly, that created political problems for the method, even though the scientists involved in the experiments claimed the radiation would not be detrimental to public health."
From one of the scientists on the project (quoted in TFA):
"For excavation, we put a lot of time and effort and money into developing nuclear explosives which had minimal fissionable material so that you could carry out a 100-kiloton cratering explosion and release the radioactivity equivalent to a 20-ton explosive of fissionable material."
Radiation is a problem, but over 2000 nuclear test have been carried out, and we haven't all dropped dead. A few more explosions that have specifically designed to minimize fallout won't kill us either.
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The referenced article mentions the project name and claimed that it was a technical success. They didn't bother to mention several technical failures, including unexpected releases of radioactive dust (some of which drifted into Canada, in contravention of a treaty), and a general inability to predict the outcome of their explosions. One of their experiments attempted to create a hill, but ended up with a crater. Another experiment did the opposite. They tried to connect two natural gas cavities, and
what I thought was interesting. (Score:2)
I really liked the thought on some new harbours and canals, but due to the radioactivity it's not viable yet.
Likewise, I could imagine making a few lakes out in the mid west or along the Mississippi river to catch some of the flooding ( and some huge bass ponds )
Re:what I thought was interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
Mutant bass? With lasers?
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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I really liked the thought on some new harbours and canals, but due to the radioactivity it's not viable yet.
I think more accurately, due to radiation it's not viable ever. Maybe using conventional explosives would work but nuclear weapons simply won't, until we develop a mutation that makes radiation impotent to humans (I don't even think this is evolutionarily possible).
Mutants anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
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Sell them for cash, lots of it. (Score:5, Funny)
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Probably forbidden by international treaties (Score:5, Insightful)
pickle 'em? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get what the big deal is. How can they lead to healthy living? They don't exactly have a lot of nutritional value---just a smidgeon of vitamin C. Don't get me wrong; they are yummy and all---especially the hot house variety, with fewer seeds and the flavor...oh, the flavor is wonderful.
Wha? Oh. *N*ukes.
Sorry.
Operation Plowshare... (Score:2, Informative)
Global cooling (Score:2, Funny)
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This solution was proposed in a short scifi story several decades ago, in fact. In the story involving the USA and USSR, one side was visiting the other and no one noticed that a colonel from the entourage stepped aside and pulled a counterpart aside and they spoke briefly. A year later there were two accidental launches, one from each side. Political tensions eased when it became clear that the two small nukes landed in the deep ocean, and sent up huge plumes of water vapor with little radiation. Not t
How about a good old megatons to megawatts program (Score:2, Insightful)
Megatons to Megawatts Program [wikipedia.org]
Great Idea... (Score:2)
Now look what you've done.
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Not really 23,000 nukes (Score:5, Interesting)
The majority of the "23,000 nukes" have essentially been deactivated and are only counted because they have not been fully disassembled yet. The link itself says only 8,000 are operational globally. On the other hand, if you count plutonium cores, trigger assemblies, and miscellaneous spare parts lying around that could be engineered into a functional weapon if required there are significantly greater than 23,000 potential nukes.
What does or does not constitute a nuclear weapon for accounting purposes does not necessarily match common sense understanding.
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Geothermal Boreholes! (Score:3, Funny)
You puncture a big hole in the earth's crust, and let the ocean flow in. You use the electrical output from the turbines to re-smelt the turbines (because they get coated with salt), and you use the steam as fresh water.
Yes we can. (Score:2)
1. You take them apart.
2. You put the material in a reactor.
3. You sell the electricity.
4. You reprocess the waste like they do in Japan. "But without pouring it into a buck through stupidity."
5. Profit.
Engineering with Nuclear Explosives (Score:5, Informative)
The classic book on this is "Engineering with Nuclear Explosives". [archive.org] I have a copy, discarded from the Stanford engineering library, and I had the Internet Archive digitize it. It has the Panama canal plan, plus several other proposed projects.
The California Department of Highways seriously considered using 22 nuclear bombs to excavate for I-40 through the mountains between Barstow and Needles. Here's the environmental impact statement: The cloud resulting from each of the two row shots would be cylindrical in shape, about 2 miles high, and 7 miles in diameter. The density of dust in this cloud might be such as to obscure vision during its passage within the first 100 miles. While radioactivity levels in the cloud would not present a hazard, it might be necessary from a traffic hazard viewpoint to close any highways in the path of the cloud during passage within the first 100 miles.
Based on the Sedan experience, it is estimated that access to the channel for limited periods of time for inspection purposes would be possible within about 24 hours. Entry for an 8-hour work day or 40-hour work week without unusual safeguards should be possible within about 4 days.
Things were so much simpler then.
well if we're talk FUN and profit (Score:4, Funny)
you have to implement all these schemes from orbit
its the only way to be sure
Nuke the moon! (Score:2)
Oh come on, if the subject is silly uses for a nuke can anyone beat A Realistic Plan for World Peace a.k.a. Nuke The Moon [www.imao.us]. And it would be just crazy enough to work if we still had Bush. Nobody would believe Obama had the balls for the kind of crazy the plan requires though.
Can't they be used as non-explosive fuel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't there some way to use the fissile material in there as non-explosive fuel? Build a nuke plant in Panama and use specialized electrically powered earth-moving equipment to dig. Then when you're done you have a clean new canal and a nuke plant instead of a toxic canal.
Or better yet, build several of the same types of reactors they use on aircraft carriers, and install them in enormous digging machines. Retired naval personnel could even be used to run the nuke operations on the diggers. Then when you're done you have several small reactors and a clean canal.
How about Orion? (Score:5, Interesting)
Winter (Score:2, Funny)
Advocating climate control nukes (Score:2)
We can easily clear a few mines (or make a pure waterway in Central America) to get enough volcanic-type particulates into the air to drench the world in rain or snow. Radiation fallout would be unpleasant, but better than the extinction of humanity.
Firecrackers (Score:2)
Or, you could put them all together and make one really big firecracker!
Alaska was a hotbed of this kind of stuff (Score:5, Informative)
...back in the day.
Project Chariot [wikipedia.org] was a program to blast a new harbor near Point Hope, led by none other than Ed Teller.
Alaska was also the site of several nuclear test blasts, among them the largest one the U.S. ever conducted: Amchitka's Nuclear Legacy [uaf.edu].
- Alaska Jack
Edward Teller would love it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Send it to mars (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I would not mind blowing one or two near several locations that appear to have some heat. Perhaps, we could tap a bit of volcanic action to create a SECURED source of heat, read energy.
Now, as to the issue of fallout, well, let me point out that with a weak magnetosphere , a lot of radiation is already getting through. I would suspect that the amount of extra radiation would not matter.
Of course, in the end, I would rather see us send several nuke reactors there.
Project Orion ! (Score:4, Informative)
Let's resurrect Project Orion [islandone.org], and use this stuff to put a few 100 people on Mars and prospect the main belt asteroids.
After all, this was one of the original rationales for Orion [wikipedia.org]. In all of this time, I don't think that anyone has come up with any better ideas, and we sure aren't getting into the solar system very fast with chemical rockets.
the Soviets created a lake with it (Score:4, Informative)
Lake Chagan [google.com] was created [wikipedia.org] by a nuclear blast purposely sited so its crater lip would dam the river, which created both a lake upstream of the river (and prevented downstream flooding), and a lake in the crater itself. Downside: the lake is still radioactive, 40+ years later.
Tides? (Score:2)
We'd lose the tides, and that would be bad because we are supposedly going to be generating clean energy from tidal forces.
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Re:Horrible idea. (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here. Stick around; I'm sure something dumber, more henious or dangerous will be posted soon - probably by a reader!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to cook and dye some Easter eggs so I can leave them out for hours in the warn weather for kids to find tomorrow...
Re:Horrible idea. (Score:4, Informative)
Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?
Detonated far enough below the surface results in almost no environmental damage.
Right, and the house and city you live in, they haven't changed the environment at all. Nor do the roads, rail and seaports that get you the PC you use to talk to slashdot, or the power plants that power that PC.
Unless you're living in a cave that already existed, pretty much everything about modern civilized human life changes the environment in a long term way. What you do in that cave will forever change the enviroment in the cave. The planet is constantly changing. New species are coming into their own, and others are disappearing. This is the way its always been and the way it always will be, regardless of how special you think you are, we're not doing anything that wasn't done long before we existed, nor will it stop when we cease to exist. Wind and rain change the environment, destory mountains, make valleys and change shorelines, are you going to stop them as well?
You don't believe this, or your just a twit, not sure which really. If you had a clue and believe it you wouldn't be using a PC or electricty in general as it has massive effects on the enviroment, from the mines that the coal comes from to the pollution produced, to the power lines cutting across the country side right down to the heat used to cool and warm your home. You sir are a hypocrite.
You really need to get some perspective. Change will happen regardless of what we do. Our children can not possibly inherit the planet in the exact same state as we did. It is not possible for you to live on the surface of the planet without changing it. If you truely believe what you say, you need to kill yourself now otherwise you are just perpetuating the problem, that too will change the planet however.
I really can't stand this level of ignorance. You have no clue and live in a dream. Building a dam does not destroy the environment, it changes it. Its going to change no matter what happens. By building a dam we can actually help protect areas of the river downstream from the change that results from massive floods. We can prevent the deaths of people due to those floods. We can provide a more consistent source of water for everything involved in the rivers ecosystem.
I grew
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So because the wind will do it eventually, we should grind down all the mountains in the hunt for minerals? We should strip mine the earth, pollute the seas and rivers with toxic materials and kill all the animals for food? Other predators kill all they want, so we should too?
Not all change is good. While good (for humans) can come from change, sometimes the bad outweighs the good.
Ignoring the long-term costs to the environment for short term benefits is what leads to air pollution causing asthma and respir
According to Space 1999... (Score:2)
You will end up with no moon instead of two moons because the moon would be knocked out [wikipedia.org] of orbit by a nuclear explosion.
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The result would eventually be two mostly round objects like it is already. Its a natural effect of gravity when the mass of an object exceeds a certain level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium [wikipedia.org]
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Nukes won't save us from a killer asteroid at short notice. When you do the math of asteroid impacts there is a maximum amount of energy that can be applied to the planet, anything larger (short of one large enough to confetti the planet) reflects back off into space. If you were to use nuclear explosions to shatter a massive asteroid into "smaller" pieces (go from the state of Colorado to 8 states of Vermont), you're t
Re: (Score:2)
Given the effects of the relatively dinky nukes dropped on Japan, I don't know how anyone can seriously consider dropping them at random to smoke out one idiot.
On top of that "those" people do not think like "we" do... dropping nukes on them will likely embolden their cause against us rather than driving them to surrender. Same for those Somali pirates... despite having a destroyer right next to them with one man being the only thing keeping them from becoming a grease spot they don't appear to have any
Yes. It's called "Megatons to Megawatts" (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program [wikipedia.org]
The Megatons to Megawatts Program is the name given to the program that implemented the 1993 United States-Russia nonproliferation agreement to convert high-enriched uranium (HEU) taken from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into low-enriched-uranium (LEU) for nuclear fuel.
From 1995 through mid-2005, 250 metric tons of high-enriched uranium (enough for 10,000 warheads) were recycled into low-enriched-uranium. The goal is to recycle 500 metric tons by 2013. Much of this fuel has already been used in many nuclear power plants in the U.S., as it is indistinguishable from normal fuel.