Nuclear Dynamite

Abstract

In the late 1950s, as part of the Atomic Energy Commission's Atoms for Peace program, the physicist Edward Teller and other scientists at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory set out to identify largescale engineering projects that could supposedly be facilitated by controlled nuclear explosions. As a trial run for one such scheme, a new canal across Latin America, Teller and company devised a plan to blast out a deepwater harbor in northern Alaska, near the Inuit village of Point Hope. Nuclear Dynamite documents the history of this scheme, dubbed Project Chariot, from initial hype to its collapse amid protests by environmentalists and local residents and a national campaign focused on the hazards of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. (An excellent account of Project Chariot is Daniel T. O'Neill's The Firecracker Boys, 1994). This film tells its disturbing story well, with unobtrusive narration; contemporary footage of Atoms for Peace promotional films, protest marches, and cheerleading by Teller; and interviews with critics, including Barry Commoner, who publicized Project Chariot's ecological hazards and also devised the Baby Tooth Project to document rising levels of strontium 90 in children. Commoner and the University of Toronto physicist Ursula Franklin, organizer of the baby tooth campaign in Canada, eloquently recall the nuclear dangers and official deceptions they battled. Freeman Dyson wryly conveys the excitement of Project Orion, a plan to use nuclear explosions to launch a massive vehicle to explore the galaxy. Keith Lawton, in the 1950s a young Episcopal priest at Point Hope, recalls the campaign to halt Project Chariot. Several Point Hope villagers describe their initial amazement at the project and their growing skepticism about the propaganda dispensed by visiting officials. John Gofman, former director of the biomedical division at Lawrence Livermore, discusses his gradual disillusionment with the enterprise and its callous disregard for human and environmental considerations. Nuclear Dynamite also incorporates film footage and interviews documenting the Soviet “atoms for peace” program—equally grandiose and equally doomed to failure.