The USSR Once Tried Reversing a River's Direction with 'Peaceful Nuclear Explosions' (bbc.com) 46
"In the 1970s, the USSR used nuclear devices to try to send water from Siberia's rivers flowing south, instead of its natural route north..." remembers the BBC.
[T]he Soviet Union simultaneously fired three nuclear devices buried 127m (417ft) underground. The yield of each device was 15 kilotonnes (about the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945). The experiment, codenamed "Taiga", was part of a two-decade long Soviet programme of carrying out peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs).
In this case, the blasts were supposed to help excavate a massive canal to connect the basin of the Pechora River with that of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Such a link would have allowed Soviet scientists to siphon off some of the water destined for the Pechora, and send it southward through the Volga. It would have diverted a significant flow of water destined for the Arctic Ocean to go instead to the hot, heavily populated regions of Central Asia and southern Russia. This was just one of a planned series of gargantuan "river reversals" that were designed to alter the direction of Russia's great Eurasian waterways...
Years later, Leonid Volkov, a scientist involved in preparing the Taiga explosions, recalled the moment of detonation. "The final countdown began: ...3, 2, 1, 0... then fountains of soil and water shot upward," he wrote. "It was an impressive sight." Despite Soviet efforts to minimise the fallout by using a low-fission explosive, which produce fewer atomic fragments, the blasts were detected as far away as the United States and Sweden, whose governments lodged formal complaints, accusing Moscow of violating the Limited Test Ban Treaty...
Ultimately, the nuclear explosions that created Nuclear Lake, one of the few physical traces left of river reversal, were deemed a failure because the crater was not big enough. Although similar PNE canal excavation tests were planned, they were never carried out. In 2024, the leader of a scientific expedition to the lake announced radiation levels were normal.
"Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, which not only consumed a huge amount of money, but pushed environmental concerns up the political agenda," the article notes.
"Four months after the Number Four Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the river reversal project."
And a Russian blogger who travelled to Nuclear Lake in the summer of 2024 told the BBC that nearly 50 years later, there were some places where the radiation was still significantly elevated.
In this case, the blasts were supposed to help excavate a massive canal to connect the basin of the Pechora River with that of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Such a link would have allowed Soviet scientists to siphon off some of the water destined for the Pechora, and send it southward through the Volga. It would have diverted a significant flow of water destined for the Arctic Ocean to go instead to the hot, heavily populated regions of Central Asia and southern Russia. This was just one of a planned series of gargantuan "river reversals" that were designed to alter the direction of Russia's great Eurasian waterways...
Years later, Leonid Volkov, a scientist involved in preparing the Taiga explosions, recalled the moment of detonation. "The final countdown began: ...3, 2, 1, 0... then fountains of soil and water shot upward," he wrote. "It was an impressive sight." Despite Soviet efforts to minimise the fallout by using a low-fission explosive, which produce fewer atomic fragments, the blasts were detected as far away as the United States and Sweden, whose governments lodged formal complaints, accusing Moscow of violating the Limited Test Ban Treaty...
Ultimately, the nuclear explosions that created Nuclear Lake, one of the few physical traces left of river reversal, were deemed a failure because the crater was not big enough. Although similar PNE canal excavation tests were planned, they were never carried out. In 2024, the leader of a scientific expedition to the lake announced radiation levels were normal.
"Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, which not only consumed a huge amount of money, but pushed environmental concerns up the political agenda," the article notes.
"Four months after the Number Four Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the river reversal project."
And a Russian blogger who travelled to Nuclear Lake in the summer of 2024 told the BBC that nearly 50 years later, there were some places where the radiation was still significantly elevated.
China actually did something similar (Score:5, Informative)
Re: China actually did something similar (Score:1)
Re: China actually did something similar (Score:5, Interesting)
The fundamental issue is that explosions aren't a very efficient method of excavation. A lot of energy gets expended moving earth that didn't need moving, or that falls back in the hole. And it tends to produces circular(ish) holes which isn't ideal for making a channel. That might not matter so much if the power source is cheap, but it does mean you're using quite big bombs in proportion to the useful excavation you get. And bigger bombs mean more fallout. You'd do better putting the nuclear material in a reactor connected to a generator driving an electric excavator.
Re: (Score:2)
You're using the word digging wrong. Directional charges direct the force of an explosion. It doesn't solve the underlying issue that the resulting material doesn't simply disappear. Just what direction do you intend to put the force? Down? meaning the soil isn't lifted anywhere and stays in place, or up meaning the soil simply goes higher and falls right back down.
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It's not like we don't already use high explosives for mining and construction. But that technology involves large arrays of relatively small high explosive charges, the detonations of which is timed very carefully.
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The US also tried it. The problem is that under water (or wet ground) explosions cause serious nuclear pollution
The US did tests (Project Plowshare), but never actually tried to implement it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Please hide those plans from President Trump.
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You can't really compare the two though. The Soviet effort was more of an experiment, where as China is using well established engineering principles, just on a scale that hasn't been seen anywhere else.
It's not just China that is good at these kinds of infrastructure projects though, there are countries in Europe that get them done too. It's really down to politics screwing things up or not. Countries that are good at infrastructure do regular projects, which allows the government institutions to build up
Re: (Score:2)
Countries that are good at infrastructure do regular projects, which allows the government institutions to build up the skill to manage and deliver them.
This even applies to the United States in one specific area: roads and highways.
"Big Asphalt" really does exist here; it's a coalition of governments and contractors. They've had plenty of practice at getting funding and stampeding past opposition.
Highway projects are generally within time and budget, but pesky facts like the uselessness of the "one more la
Re: (Score:2)
Highway projects are generally within time and budget, but pesky facts like the uselessness of the "one more lane will fix it" philosophy are almost always ignored.
Yes, and the absurd amount of time allotted is also almost always ignored. Any time I drive through a Caltrans project I think about how it would have been completed already in Japan.
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I can explain the American Problem (outside of California). Many (most?) states have engineering performed by the lowest bidder. As you might guess, the plans and specifications are copy-paste garbage that will cause problems during construction. The RFIs (Requests for Information) are numerous and wouldn't be asked of a competent project. Other than design flaws, road building estimates are well organized (way better than building construction). Work items are detailed out and recent prices are known
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Highways [Re:China actually did something similar] (Score:3)
...Highway projects are generally within time and budget
Not.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.217... [arxiv.org]
Although compared to the massive cost overruns of some military procurements, I suppose 50% is in the noise.
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200 years ago, the UK had great minds: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org] ...
Since Thatcher, not so much
Re:China actually did something similar (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the only reason we got the Channel Tunnel done was because of the French. On our own there is no way we could have done it. Same with Concorde, if it was just the British it would have been cancelled. Short term thinking is a huge problem in our politics.
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It is a problem in every country. But most countries mitigate it by: forgetting to undo the previous administration's "mistakes".
One notable exception is Merkel undoing the nuclear exit, and delaying the green revolution by 20 years or more.
and the Chicago River (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This is an attempt at reversing the course of (some of the water from) a river... but not using nuclear explosives.
If we're just talking about reversing a river, the Chicago River [wttw.com] is a case in point.
The 60s were crazy in the US (Score:3)
The US got into the planning stages of some pretty crazy nuclear bomb projects, I think mostly in the 60s. Hell, just recently Trump was talking about nuking hurricanes, an idea that did not originate with him, but with cold war era atom warriors.
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The USA and USSR were both looking for peaceful applications of nuclear bombs in the 1960s which appeared to be taken quite seriously. The Soviets had at least one success in this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The USA conducted their tests for the peaceful application of nuclear explosions under Project Plowshare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In the 1940s there could be some excuse on people being ignorant on the dangers the use of nuclear weapons could pose in long term radiation hazards. With few
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(*Possibly, not a true fact)
With Climate Change (Score:2)
With Global Warming heating up the Earth and since there is no end in sight for this Warming, I bet Russia is happy it did not succeed. Soon enough Siberia will be rather livable.
Re: With Climate Change (Score:1)
the Arrhenius curve [Re: With Climate Change] (Score:2)
There are those that view this issue differently of course. One claim I can recall is there's diminishing returns on global warming from CO2. The concern is that greenhouse gases have something of a linear effect on global temperature, and the counter is that the effect has a ceiling. The analogy I heard was much like painting a wall, the first coat of paint will hide the color beneath far more than the second, and with every layer the change in color becomes less noticeable.
Warming is not linear, but the curve is logarithmic in the concentration of IR absorbing gasses, so there isn't exactly a "ceiling", although the rate of warming with increasing concentration does decrease. That's why climate sensitivity is expressed in terms of degrees C per doubling: going from 1 to 2 times the baseline concentration has the same effect as going from 2 to 4, etc..
However, we haven't yet even reached a single doubling, so the rate is still very much in the linear range.
Re: With Climate Change (Score:2)
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Actually there is much geological evidence of the earth climate cyclically getting warmer and colder.
Yes, we even have ice cores showing that. There are multiple reasons Milankovitch cycles, solar insolation related to the age of a star, volcanic activity, and the energy retention characteristics of an atmosphere based on the composition of that atmosphere. Some retaining heat, like some carbon compounds (CO2, methane) and some that increase heat loss like Sulfuric Aerosols.
One of the unfortunate things is that politicians can sometimes attempt to circumvent the laws of physics by voting on them. Or po
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Actually there is much geological evidence of the earth climate cyclically getting warmer and colder.
True, but those naturally-occurring cycles are on a time scale of tens of thousands of years [nasa.gov] .
The current warming is orders of magnitude faster.
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No, it won't be liveable.
Look on a map where Siberia actually is?
Random factoid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Many years ago, I read a detailed history of the Grand Canyon. There is pretty solid geological evidence that the river used to flow in the opposite direction. The reversal of that river is part of what produced the canyon. One online reference [sciencedaily.com]
Awesome - thanks for the link. I've been searching out info now, and the Colorado river is seriously interesting. In addition to the flow reversal, there were apparently a lot of volcanic dams that would last a few decades, then collapse, with huge floods resulting.
Nuclear bombs could be used peacefully (Score:2)
Nuke test detection (Score:2)
This summary implies that the nuclear explosions were detected by radionucleotides, but in actuality, they were determined seismically.
good for plugging holes (Score:1)
I remember around 2010 there were some helpful suggestions from Russia that the US should plug the BP oil spill in the Gulf using nuclear bombs. It seems they've done so a few times.
Nuclear Tests Reduced Less than 10% of Ionopshere (Score:2)
Atomic Lake (Score:2)
and the really sad part? (Score:2)
Meanwhile... (Score:1)
Kind of calls to mind that old (possibly apocryphal) story about NASA spending millions of dollars for ballpoint pens that work in zero gravity, and the Russians just using pencils. Except, you know, turned around backwards.