Project Plowshare

Kaufman convincingly demonstrates that Plowshare is a valuable lens to look at the Cold War, at how policy-making was done in Washington, and at how massive funds and resources could be wasted following 'national security' dreams. The level of detail and the amount of research...are admirable.

-- Luca Trenta * Journal of Transatlantic Studies *

Kaufman's work is impressive as a narrative of the Plowshare program, and essential reading for those interested in nuclear history... he has produced an elucidating and stimulating work that is most highly recommended to all those interested in the age of atomic utopianism.

-- David A. Burke * American Historical Review *

Project Plowshare received its name from the book of Isaiah 2:4 ('beat their swords into plowshares'). Launched with enthusiasm in 1957, Plowshare attempted to utilize nuclear explosions for peaceful activities. The US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) ultimately conducted 27 underground nuclear explosions in a quest to create new elements for various purposes, build heat storage caverns, build canals, exploit minerals, and excavate roadbeds. Many projects were planned outside the Nevada test site, but opposition to all nuclear explosions was growing, and a serious effort to negotiate a nonproliferation treaty with the Soviet Union led to a moratorium on testing all nuclear bombs. Negative outcomes were replete; a gas-and-oil stimulation program attempted in New Mexico followed by a decade-long natural gas storage effort in Pennsylvania generated public concerns related to radioactive isotopes. Kaufman provides detailed accounts of sometimes misguided projects, answering questions of who, what, why, when, and where in an organized fashion. The book contains elements of a history book, a scientific thesis, and a good novel. Interested readers will return often to this book to review the complexities of underground nuclear testing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

* Choice *

Scott Kaufman's Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold WarAmerica, examines the [Atomic Energy Commission]’s dogged—and costly—attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of large-scale nuclear engineering, even in the face of mounting national and international concerns....Kaufman’s narrative expands not only the history of Plowshare but also the story of nuclear weapons and arms control....He explores both the bold visions behind Plowshare and the program’s ignominious decline. The result is a book that, while sometimesoverly technical in detail, offers a well-structured critique ofthegovernment’sattempt to create an atomic utopia—and to generate the necessaryatomic utopianism.

-- Jason Krupar * Technology and Culture *

Scott Kaufman's book on Project Plowshare is a tale of atomic bureaucracy, written in an evenhanded style, in which the AEC tried against all odds to keep the program alive...Kaufman's informative book makes clear that Project Plowshare was hindered most by the test ban. But it was a slow, expensive death marked by cost overruns, repeated failures to anticipate test effects accurately, and a massive public crisis of confidence in the AEC by the mid-1970s. Scholars will find Project Plowshare a useful guide to the national and international politics of peaceful nuclear explosions.

-- Jacob Darwin Hamblin * The Journal of American Histor