Book Description

This report is a collection of three separate papers dealing with 'Water Resource Applications of Plowshare in the United States', 'Underground Storage of Natural Gas in Nuclear Cavities', and 'Waste Disposal'. The first of the papers was written by Gerald D. Cohen; the latter two by Francis M. Sand. During the writing of these reports a variety of difficulties were encountered in the economic evaluation of each of these peaceful applications of nuclear explosives among them difficulties in projecting potential demand for these processes, uncertainties regarding technical questions due to the lack of nuclear experiments in all three cases, and as a consequence quite some uncertainty must also be attached to the economic benefits and costs of these processes. The main results of the three reports are: In the case of Water Resource Applications within the United States, we concluded that on a national scale the United States is endowed with ample water resources. Only in selected regional situations water shortages appear imminent as the population increases. Extending present trends in water consumption and management, by the end of this century 22 river basins in the United States may not have local supplies of water sufficient to support further development. Four different approaches to solve this problem were proposed, and in each of them, nuclear explosives could be used at some stage: (1) Increase the storage capacity of water on or beneath the land surface. Such storage space could be created either by throwout and subsidence craters or by nuclear chimneys deep underground. The cost of crater reservoirs appears to be within feasible range. The main advantage of using nuclear chimneys for water storage is that they are not subject to the heavy evaporation losses of surface reservoirs.