An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past

Project Chariot: Alaskan Roots of Enivornmentalism

Project Chariot Alaskan Roots of Environmentalism PETER COATES The popular notion that Alaska is America's last frontier, a remote, unsettled wilderness, traditionally has been linked with the concept of economic development : the region's lack of development has been understood as an opportunity for investment and seems even to have beckoned investment, as a virgin snowfall tempts one to make the first footprint. But Alaska's remote regions are not uninhabited : 208 Native villages are scattered throughout this northern wilderness. Planners far from Alaska have not always been well informed about the region. And on a number ofoccasions various government agencies have sought to test exotic and potentially harmful devices where they assumed there would be little human impact or notice. In the late 7960s, for example, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission undertook a series ofunderground nuclear tests on Amchitka Island. The government halted the program after three tests because ofprotests overpotential contamination ofarea fisheries. Earlier plans by the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers to dam the Yukon River in Rampart Canyon deep in the Interior went awry when protests over the extermination of millions ofacres of migratory waterfowl habitat could no longer be ignored. In the 7970s the U.S. Army kept secret the placement of a nuclear reactor to generate electric power at Fort Greely near Delta, again in the Interior. In the late 795Os the nuclear physicist Edward Teller, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, proposed blasting an artificial harbor on the Alaskan Arctic coast as part ofthe AEC's Atoms for Peace program to show the domestic uses ofnuclearpower. Teller and AEC scientists argued there would be no human or environmental impact . Most Alaskans accepted their representation and whole-heartedly supported the project. Several scientists at the University ofAlaska, however, pointed out that there would in fact be high detrimental impacts, particularly on remote Eskimo villages. Rather than gratitude for their warning, these scientists received criticism, This article appeared originally in Alaska History 4 (Fall 1989): 1-31; it is reprinted here by permission. 378 Alaskan Roots of Environmentalism 379 and most eventually were fired, a story told well in Dan O'Neil/'s 7994 book Firecracker Boys (New York: St. Martin's Press, 7994). Peter Coates has published one of the few important studies of the history of the relationship between technology and environment in Alaska, The TransAlaska Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation, and the Frontier (Toronto: Associated University Presses, 7997), in which he argues that the embrace of technology and economic development has inhibited substantive debate on the nature and role of the Alaska environment. In the article reprinted here, Coates (no relation to Ken Coates) traces the origins of much of the modern environmental movement to Project Chariot, Teller's Alaska project. Protesters organized as the Alaska Wilderness Society to call the attention of national environmental groups to the dangers posed by the radioactive fallout from the proposed blast, to the government's obfuscations, and to society's vulnerability to false government assurances about the safety of this and other technological advances tied to economic development. Other historians have also addressed the need for environmental histories of Alaska, among them William Cronon and Donald Worster, major scholars of the American West. E ver since the wartime Manhattan Project, the potential for virtuous and constructive applications of the most destructive force in history has enthralled the emerging American nuclear establishment. Most scientists and officials thought about "taming the atom" in terms of generating vast quantities of cheap electricity by atomic reactor. Others believed that atomic power could be harnessed to propel airplanes, ships, trains, and even automobiles. In the late 1950s, however, some researchers also began to investigate the use of atomic explosives for civil engineering . The biblical image of the sword beaten into a plowshare provided the civilian Atomic Energy Commission with a persuasive symbol for this benevolent vision. In 1957 the AEC established Project Plowshare to develop and promote peaceful uses of nuclear explosives and assigned technical direction to the University of California's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL). The AEC conceived a spectacular multitude of what it called "geographical engineering" schemes as part of Plowshare, including the use of atom and hydrogen explosives to dam and redirect rivers, create underground water reservoirs, cut tunnels through mountains, and release mineral wealth from the ground. None of these was considered technologically or economically feasible with conventional methods.1 380 PETER COATES Under...