and massive resource extraction projects.

Though
neither concept ever truly came to fruition,
Project Plowshare represents one of the most
audacious examples of a trend that accelerated
in the Cold War and continues today – the
coopting of science for personal as well as
political interests. For geologists, this has dire
consequences indeed, since their territory is the
earth itself.

“And they shall beat their swords into

plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks…” Isaiah 2:4.

Figure 1. Image from B.G. Bray et al., (1968). U.S. Patent

No. 3409082 (Process for stimulating petroliferous
subterranean formations with contained nuclear
explosions.)

PROJECT PLOWSHARE: DR. EDWARD

TELLER’S ATTEMPT TO TURN A LEGACY OF
WAR INTO PEACE
The concept of nuclear weapons as “powerful
workhorses” arose out of attempts by both
scientists and politicians in the late 1950s to
develop “clean” (read: fallout-free) bombs that,
theoretically, had relevant uses in war and peace.
Dr. Edward Teller, the eponymous “father of the
hydrogen bomb,” was inspired by a February
1957 symposium, the “AEC Weapons Laboratory
Symposium on Non-Military Uses of Nuclear and
Thermonuclear Explosions,” in which scientists