Operation Chariot (1958)

Project Chariot was a 1958 US Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices.

The project originated as part of Operation Plowshare, a research project to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives.

The plan was championed by Edward Teller, who traveled throughout the state touting the harbor as an important economic development for America's newest state. Alaskan political leaders, newspaper editors, the state university's president, even church groups all rallied in support of the massive detonation. Congress had passed the Alaskan Statehood Act just a few weeks before. An editorial in the 24 July 1960 Fairbanks News-Miner said, "We think the holding of a huge nuclear blast in Alaska would be a fitting overture to the new era which is opening for our state." Opposition came from the tiny Inupiat Eskimo village of Point Hope, a few scientists engaged in environmental studies under AEC contract, and a handful of conservationists. The grassroots protest soon was picked up by organizations with national reach, such as The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and Barry Commoner's Committee for Nuclear Information. In 1962, facing increased public uneasiness over the environmental risk and the potential to disrupt the lives of the Eskimos, the AEC announced that Project Chariot would be "held in abeyance." It has never been formally canceled.

In addition to the objections of the local population, no practical use of such a harbor was ever identified. The environmental studies commissioned by the AEC suggested that radioactive contamination from the proposed blast could adversely affect the health and safety of the local people, whose livelihoods were based on hunting animals. The investigations noted that radiation from world-wide fallout was moving with unusual efficiency up the food chain in the Arctic, from lichen, to caribou (which fed on lichen), to humans (for whom caribou was a primary food source).

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