Operation Chariot (1958)

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One of the Chariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices to create the artificial harbor.

Operation Chariot was a 1958 proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by means of a series of nuclear explosions. Some serious planning of this scheme was conducted until it was cancelled in 1962 by the Kennedy Administration.

In addition to the objections of the local population, no real use of such a harbor was ever identified. The authorities realised that radiological impact on the environment would have made the area too dangerous to live and work in. The political implications of detonating a nuclear explosion in Alaska, even though it was some distance from the Bering Strait and the Soviet Union, may also have been a consideration.

Although the plan was never carried out, the site was radioactively contaminated by an experiment to determine the effects of buried nuclear wastes on drinking water. Material from an earlier nuclear explosion at a Nevada test site was transported in August 1962 to the Chariot site and buried. Thirty years later, tests revealed low levels of radioactivity at a depth of two feet (60 cm) into the burial site, sparking anger in the Inupiat village of Point Hope which had experienced high rates of cancer in the intervening years. The waste was finally removed at considerable expense.