This Is How America Nearly Nuked A Canal Through Central America
In the 1960s, the powers-that-be decided that Panama Canal wasn’t enough. There was simply too much land still in the way, and it would be rather useful if, somewhere along Central America, a new route could be dug out. Fortunately, science had seemingly provided an answer to an impatient US government: why not simply use a series of colossal nuclear weapons to literally carve a hole through hundreds of kilometres of rock?
This was to be the Pan-Atomic Canal. Here’s the story of why it never came to pass.
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The Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist Edward Teller played a key role in Project Plowshare. Known as the father of the hydrogen bomb after successfully encouraging the US government, via Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, to develop such a program in the 1950s, he was also a proponent of PNEs.
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So, in the early-to-mid-1960s, plans were drawn up to create a nuclear-forged sequel to the Panama Canal. The Interoceanic Sea-Level Canal Study, as it was technically referred to, was in fact a third generation scheme, with the first two cropping up, before being nixed, in in 1939 and 1946 respectively. The former was designed to just increase capacity, whereas the latter was aimed to provide a back-up in case the original was attacked with nuclear weapons.
The cost, according to a series of 1964 Congressional hearings, would be anything between $620 million, if nukes were used, to $13 billion, if they weren’t. The economics of the situation seemed promising, so in 1967-1968, the US Army Corps of Engineers sent 50 geologists to look for the best possible routes through Central America.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robinandrews/2018/08/23/this-is-how-america-nearly-nuked-a-canal-through-central-america/
This kind of vision and initiative should be able to unclog the Suez Canal.
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