No More Hiroshima’s, No More Project Plowshares, No More Project Rulisons!

Hiroshima, Shrine for the victims. August 6, 1987

No more Hiroshima’s, No more Project Plowshares, No more Project Rulisons!

I hope people go see the film “Oppenheimer” – a long somewhat tortured visual partial biography of Robert Oppenheimer who shepherded the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. I have read valid criticisms of the movie – how it focuses too much on Oppenheimer’s personal life – making it just one more American personal melodrama – and not enough on the horrific impact of the bomb, what it did to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what it has done since to “downwinders” the world over, on the Pacific Islands, in the areas surrounding the Nevada test site, in the Algerian Sahara where France did its first tests, in Kazakhstan and near the Urals where the Soviets tested, etc. And then there is the film’s merciless length, more than three hours. Who is going to sit through that? And in my case I saw the film with Nancy and a few dear friends in a mega theater in Aurora Colorado, appropriately enough, the same theater where in August 2012, a f@#king idiot named James Holmes, masked and dressed tactical clothes entered the theater set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. Twelve people were killed and 70 others were injured, 58 of them from gunfire. Just the right place to see a film about government sponsored mass murder.

Despite its warts, “Oppenheimer” is very much worth seeing

After “the war” – the way my generation often refers to WW2 – as if it was the only war that ever happened in all of history – as the Soviets also detonated their version of a nuclear weapon – the President Eisenhower, worried that the American people and those of the rest of the world might get “the wrong idea” about nuclear weapons. He thought the public should “embrace them” so to speak and suggesting that instead of “instruments” or “devices” of mass murder, that nuclear weapons have a positive role to play in promoting human progress, that they could be used to build tunnels through mountains, excavate land to be used for ports, for mining, or, my favorite one, could be a cheaper way to either expand the Panama Canal or build a wider one for the bigger tankers to come that were having difficulty getting through the Panama Canal as it then existed. And nuclear weapons could also be used – get this – for what today is referred to as “fracking” – ie, breaking through deep underground rock to create cavities into which, from the many blast created fissures, natural gas would flow, filling the cavity with a commercially viable product that could be used to as a source of heat energy in American kitchens.

This dark, fanciful, chilling idea not had only a name – Project Plowshares – but a whole sordid history, that included a number of “near projects” (a plan to build a port in northern Alaska), talk that went through several stages to widen the Panama Canal as noted above and the actual detonation of several nuclear bombs – one in New Mexico, two in the Colorado mountains (Project Rulison, Project Rio Blanco) the goal of which was an early version of fracking – using nuclear weapons for mining natural gas in the Rockies. The New Mexico and Colorado detonations all led to escapes of radioactive materials, the natural gas produced was toxic – or feared toxic enough that no city, no even one of the country’s most corrupt, Los Angeles, refused to purchase it. But those blasts were just a prelude to the big one – a plan to detonate more than 200 nuclear weapons in the Wyoming coal fields for natural gas production. If in other ways, Jimmy Carter was a disappointing president whose aspirations for cutting the military budget in fact of a close to all powerful military industrial complex went nowhere, still Carter, mercifully, killed the program, saving the state of Wyoming for the likes of Dick Cheney and his foreign policy cabal.

The scientific mastermind, social midget of the program, who lobbied for Project Plowshares and became its most ardent defender was none other than Edward Teller, “the father of the H-bomb” whose role in developing the atomic bomb is, generally speaking, accurately portrayed in “Oppenheimer”. Turns out his effort to “beautify” nuclear weapons as cheap material for construction projects and mining went nowhere. And yet today, there are Dr. Strangeloves,  intellectual offspring of Edward Teller and Curtis “bomb ’em back to the stone age” LeMay. Not only are such nutcases still around, but they have enough influence to push through legislation for a $ 2 trillion modernization of Washington’s nuclear arsenal pushing the Russians, Chinese and those other countries to do likewise. While Climate Change certainly is a danger to life on earth, the danger of nuclear war is right up there as well. But who gives a shit? Where is the awareness of the nuclear war danger, here in the USA, in the rest of the world?

It is rare that mention of Project Rulison and even more so, Project Rio Blanco (where two atomic bombs were detonated) are a part of the public debate in here in Colorado although in response to the movie “Oppenheimer” a decent piece commemorating Project Rulison appeared in Westword written by Scott Yates. Four years ago, a number of us – actually four of us – who had participated in the protest to prevent the Rulison nuclear blast from taking place – two of whom were present a mile from the site when the blast occurred – Chester McQueary and Melinda Dell Fitting – went back to the blast site to commemorate the protest, and to mourn the detonation. Project Rulison – A Blast from the Past – Another Project Plowshares Debacle. Four Protesters and a documentary Film Crew Return to the Scene of the Crime. Scott Yates asked me in an email if the film of this event was ever made. I am not sure, but I don’t think so. I would hope that one day soon, one will be made. For the moment, we’ll have to manage with “Oppenheimer”.

No more Hiroshima’s, No more Project Plowshares, No more Project Rulisons!

Protesters at the Rulison nuclear blast site, Ground Zero, along with the documentary film makers from Project Boom. They are making a documentary about Project Plowshares and Rulison in particular. Nancy Fey in white sweatshirt with flowers. On her right Melinda Dell Fitting. Front and center in light long sleeve shirt, Chester McQueary and to his right in the red t-shirt, yours truly, Rob Prince.