The American peaceful nuclear explosion program was called Project Plowshare[0] and seems to have been mostly tests, with practical applications to come later. In contrast, the Soviet Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy[1] claims almost a hundred non-testing uses. Most likely both programs were ultimately for weapons development, but it's interesting that the Soviets did manage to actually use some explosions for real non-weapon uses, while the American program never went that far.
> Most likely both programs were ultimately for weapons development
Seems unlikely, the weapons used were pretty well understood. There was a real hype about the idea of non-military use of nukes as explosives back then, as it offered explosive energy in scales simply unfeasible with conventional explosives.
For reference, Minor Scale (the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, as far as I know) was 4kT, the average NEftNE explosion was 12.5, and they went as high as 140. Plowshare ranged from 0.3 to 104, but most tests were in the range of Minor Scale.
A lot of fallout comes from detonating over the ground so that the force smacks into earth and spins up a ton of debris which is breathed in and causes all those nasty diseases. How long a place is irradiated is pretty much tied to how long those particulates float around causing mayhem. After that, sweeping up all the debris and containing it is a solid way of preparing the area for humans again.
"After that, sweeping up all the debris and containing it is a solid way of preparing the area for humans again."
Sounds like lots of effort. And would still leave me wondering at every rock I encounter, of whether I should avoid this one, because it was overlooked.
The people in the comments of the video purporting it’s “lack of propaganda” weird me out. You’re just frighteningly bad at detecting propaganda. The entire video, and the entire government program that spurred the video were propaganda.
The entire Soviet system only released information through a strong propaganda filter. There was simply no room for any action of the government to be reflected poorly. These tests by and large ended up radiating populations and not telling them.
Another test - a nuclear blast in the vicinity of Moscow, which caused small contaminated area (100x150 m) as well as risk of polluting the Volga basin.
I understood the H2S was leaking through much more superficial ground than the one that received the nuclear blast.
Of course, we don't actually know the details about any of it. But there were plenty of underground nuclear explosions, and people are usually quite good at controlling them.
It's an extremely well made film – and extremely effective propaganda. Having seen this as part of the intended audience, you're probably proud of your country and eager to contribute, and at ease with the technology involved.
In fact, the whole existence of the Soviet Union and everything that was done inside it was merely a propaganda stunt stretched into 67 years, that had no other purpose except showing the greatness of the Soviet Union as an actual country (while in reality, of course, it was but a humongous film set, with a propagandistic theatre play being performed on it).
Sputnik was quite real, though.
As were lots of other things. For example the industrialisation of a big country that was in poor rural state before, while being blocked by the west.
Not everyone in the sowjets was forced to be there. Idealism is a strong driving force, otherwise the sowjet empire would not have sustained itself for so long on propaganda alone.
Do you think American nuclear tests and news reels from the era were propaganda free?
This was an active natural gas well and drilling area. No one was living near it--it would have been a nightmare of potential deadly gas exposure to do so, even ignoring the nuclear blast. The blast was 1000+ meters underground so no cloud or fallout was thrown into the air. The really dangerous radioisotopes from most bombs have a half life less than a decade so everything underground is likely pretty benign now. But again, no one is going to be digging a hole 1000 meters down into a former natural gas well to go live there.
I like (well, maybe the wrong word) the one video that was made for the leadership only, and has an image of a couple of guys walking down a street near a nuclear test site. The narrator says something like: “These people think they are safe because they’re far enough from the test site. They will soon learn the error of their ways.” They’re then promptly bowled over when the blast front hits (or ripped to shreds, the video doesn’t say).
I keep wondering if it was deliberate or just a “happy little accident”.
I don't mean to imply that Soviet Union did not have lots of propaganda. But do you have any proof that this particular underground explosion caused radioactive pollution for some populations?
The geysers were showing in the video, there was hot gas outpouring from the ground everywhere. That makes it difficult to believe that there was no radiation leak.
In principle yes, but it's good to have someone look over the previous thread to make sure it's interesting. Also, there are often previous related threads which don't have similar titles or URLs and yet relate to the same story—hard for a bot to find those.
I think maybe coming up with an initial list mechanically and then having a way for community members to curate it may be the sweet spot.
"Statistically improbable phrases" are one way to branch such searchs.
So, the bot looks for the URL and title matches, then looks for tuples within those sets (2--3 word chains seems to be a sweet spot), and which of those seem to cluster on those aprticular articles and comments, but not a tremendous number of others.
"Operation Trojan Shield" would be a good match for the An0m sting being discussed elsewhere. "The FBI" or "First Amendment", though not highly prevalent, are still sufficiently used elsewhere that they probably would not be.
Someone would have to keep tally of the tuples, though.
We've worked on things like this in the past without success. Even just saving the html of the web pages that get submitted to HN is a nontrivial problem, and extracting text from them for similarity searches even more so. If people wanted to work on this as an open-source thing, we'd be open to supporting it somehow, but it'll be quite a while before we get back to working on the problem at this level ourselves. I think relying on the community to co-curate related-links lists (and duplicates) is likely a better and easier strategy.
Fires of Kuwait. IMAX film. Highly recommended. Fascinating all the methods they used to extinguish the oil well fires that Saddam Hussein ordered to be set on fire.
"underground coal-seam fires are the most persistent fires on Earth and can burn for thousands of years, like Burning Mountain in Australia"
"The oldest coal fire in China is in Baijigou (白芨沟, in Dawukou District of Shizuishan City, Ningxia) and is said to have been burning since the Qing Dynasty (before 1912)."
"The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962"
"In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner, then-mayor John Coddington, inserted a dipstick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot. He lowered a thermometer into the tank on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F"
Also on the subject of unusual firefighting methods:
"The Górniczy Agregat Gaśniczy (GAG) is a jet engine inertisation unit developed for use in mines, controlling and suppressing coal seam fires and neutralising firedamp situations. The unit was designed in Poland in the 1970s, its name roughly translates as "Mine Fire Suppression Apparatus""
Saw bits of it, will watch more later - it does look beautiful and well done.
However, the thing that struck me the most is that no one is wearing gas masks. It must have been stinking and pretty harmful, but I guess that is the oil and gas industry..
Soviet, propaganda, whatever. These people have done a breathtaking job at the cutting edge of technology backed by paper and pencil. Let’s appreciate that for a minute.
If you only want to spend one minute on it, footage of the actual event starts at about 15:52 and is followed immediately by an animated diagram of how it worked (detonation 1.5km below the surface which collapsed the well from the side).
Given that the fire burned for over two years, I was wondering why they didn't drop some kind of bell over the well and piped the gas somewhere useful. It certainly seems doable within a couple of months. Of course I'm sure nobody expected the fire to resist for so long.
The discordant musical score in parts adds a layer of eeriness that's quite effective, you certainly don't see it in pop cinema. It's genuinely uncomfortable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nat...