Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [27]
A little more than a year earlier, the United States and the Soviet Union had signed an international agreement to limit the scope of nuclear testing. No longer was it acceptable to detonate a nuclear bomb on the surface of the Earth, in the atmosphere, underwater, or in space. Only underground testing was allowed. Even an underground test was a violation if it caused radioactive debris to float across national borders. The fallout dropping on Japan was clear evidence that the USSR was violating the treaty.
The Americans had few details about the test. At first, their seismic monitors seemed to imply that it was a 150-kiloton bomb that had exploded underground but which had been imperfectly contained, allowing some of the radiation to escape into the atmosphere. Within a few days, American scientists had revised their guess, estimating that the bomb might be as big as a megaton. They also knew roughly where the explosion happened: in Kazakhstan at the Semipalatinsk test site. They knew little else.
On January 21, Secretary of State Dean Rusk demanded an explanation from the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. Dobrynin responded, “An underground explosion was indeed carried out in the Soviet Union . . . deep down underground.” Furthermore, he insisted, the amount of debris that leaked into the atmosphere was “insignificant.” It was a lie.
The explosion, and the resulting fallout, was the beginning of a top-secret Soviet project, Program No. 7. Starting with the mysterious January 1965 explosion and continuing for the next twenty-three years, Program No. 7 would use fusion weapons to dig canals, build underground storage caves, turn on and shut off gas wells, and change the face of the Earth. With the January 1965 explosion, Russian scientists, in a fraction of a second, had carved a major lake and a reservoir, now known as Lake Chagan, out of bedrock.
Program No. 7 was not the only secret government project to harness the power of fusion. An equivalent program was already under way in the United States. A few years earlier, American scientists began work on Project Plowshare and started drawing up plans to use nuclear weapons to create an artificial harbor in Alaska, widen the Panama Canal, and dig a second Suez canal through Israel’s Negev desert.
Project Plowshare and Program No. 7 were crude attempts to harness the power of fusion. Researchers quickly reasoned that if humans could learn to control the power of fusion, it could be the biggest boon that mankind has ever seen. We could visit the outer reaches of the solar system and even visit nearby stars. We would never have to worry again about dwindling energy supplies, oil crises, or global warming.
Of course, it wouldn’t work out quite that nicely.
In the early 1950s, the world seemed on the brink of nuclear war. Mankind had unleashed a force so great that it could destroy entire cities in a fraction of a second. And though the United States had a small lead over the Russians in developing superbombs, soon both sides would be armed with fusion weapons. If nothing was done, said President Eisenhower in 1953, humanity would have to accept the probability of the end of civilization. At the same time, civil defense films, while trying to calm a jittery nation, whipped up an overwhelming fear of nuclear annihilation. The scientists who had unleashed the power of the sun had placed a great burden on humanity.
But they had hopes that their work would save civilization rather than destroy it. With this unimaginable source of energy, they could usher in a golden era. Even as Bert the Turtle implored children to “duck and cover” upon sighting the inevitable flash from a Russian bomb, other films touted