Blog Archives

Terraforming with nukes An underground nuclear test explosion near Carlsbad, New Mexico on this day in 1961 marks the beginning of 27 tests of “peaceful nuclear explosions” that would carve out harbors and canals. The following year (1962), environmentalists and native groups would organize to stop one of these, Project Chariot, which was a plan to create a new harbor using five nuclear explosions near Point Hope, Alaska. The tests continued through 1973, but no actual nuclear terraforming projects were undertaken.

Beginning of the Atomic Age The world’s first nuclear reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, entered a sustained nuclear reaction on this day in1942 in a makeshift lab beneath the grandstand of the University of Chicago football stadium. “…the Italian Navigator has just landed in the New World…” was the coded telephone message confirming first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, according to the Library of Congress.    The Pile-1 reactor was part of the Manhattan Project that led to nuclear weapons as well as nuclear power.

Russian sub sinks Russian K-141 sinks in the Barents Sea on this day in 2000.

First nuclear power The world’s first nuclear power to generate electricity for a grid came on line in Oninsk, Russia, on this day in 1954.

US atomic weapons testing begins on this day in 1946 with the first of the Bikini island atomic tests in the Pacific.

Russian nuclear dumping Greenpeace observers photograph Russian ship TNT-27 dumping 900 tons of low level radioactive waste off the east coast of Russia in the Sea of Japan on this day in 1993. The evidence of dumping widens an existing international diplomatic rift between Japan and Russia.

Soviet sub K-431 accident takes place on this day in 1985 in Vladivostok. An accident during refueling led to 10 deaths and 49 other radiation injuries. At the time it was considered one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters — but this is before Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Three Mile Island nuclear commission report A Presidential commission chaired by Dartmouth College President John Kemeny reports on this day in 1980 that a combination of human error, management failures, and mechanical flaws caused the near-meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant on March 28, 1979.

Plutonium contamination found at Nevada desert atomic bomb test sites according to AEC testimony today in 1970.

Cannikin nuclear test takes place this day in 1971 as the US detonates the largest underground nuclear weapon ever, at 400 times the size of Hiroshima. Concerned about possible earthquakes and tsunamis, a group forms in Vancouver Canada called the Dont Make a Wave committee, later known as Greenpeace. In 1996, researchers found that plutonium and americium radiation was leaking from the test site on Amchitka island, although this is disputed by the US government.