In the ongoing quest to save the planet, climate researchers have embraced tools as varied as direct air capture machines and volcanic rock dust. But if you thought things couldn’t get more creative (or alarming), a recent report from AS English presents perhaps the boldest (and most counterintuitive) solution yet: detonate a hydrogen bomb on the ocean floor. Move over, carbon taxes; Andy Haverly wants to nuke the Kerguelen Plateau.
Revisiting the Greatest Hits of Nuclear Optimism
As described in the outlet, the U.S. government’s Project Plowshare, starting in the late 1950s, once saw nuclear bombs as potential tools for civil engineering—using them to blast out ports, canals, and even highways. The 1962 “Sedan” detonation, for example, created a massive crater and briefly elevated the prospects of atom-bomb-assisted construction. However, AS English reports that mounting public opposition over radioactive fallout, combined with underwhelming real-world results, led to the program’s quiet cancellation in 1977. Apparently, enthusiasm for turning the planet into a science experiment can cool quickly when the fallout isn’t just metaphorical.
The Plan: Big Bang Theory, Carbon Edition
Channeling the ambitions of mid-century nuclear optimism, Haverly proposes burying a hydrogen bomb beneath the basalt-rich Kerguelen Plateau in the Southern Ocean—two to three miles deep within the seabed and four to five miles below the water’s surface. According to calculations cited in the report, detonating a device in this remote and geologically suitable spot would pulverize immense quantities of basalt, which could then kickstart a process called Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW). This natural chemical reaction turns powdered rock into something of a carbon sponge, locking away CO₂ from the atmosphere and, in theory, putting a dent in climate change.
The report explains that in Haverly’s view, most radiation released by the blast would be absorbed and trapped locally, within the seabed. While he forecasts “few or no loss of life due to the immediate effects of radiation,” he also acknowledges there would be long-term impacts, yet describes the anticipated increase in oceanic radiation as “just a drop in the ocean.” For reference, Haverly compares this to the radiation already emitted annually by coal power plants and notes, via the outlet, that humanity has detonated more than 2,000 nuclear devices to date. In his calculation, one more might not tip the cosmic scales—especially given the projection, as AS English notes, that climate change is expected to threaten some 30 million lives by 2100.
Absurdity or Audacity?
The proposal sits at that peculiar intersection of alarming and logical, tethered by a faith in both scientific ingenuity and the capacity to manage risks that have, historically, proven stubbornly unmanageable. As documented by AS English, Project Plowshare serves as its own cautionary tale—an era of “contained” nuclear experiments with unpredictable legacies. The fallout, both environmental and political, often outlasted the optimism.
It’s hard not to wonder whether the urge to “fix” the natural world by detonating something under the Southern Ocean comes from an abundance of faith in our engineering prowess, or from an ongoing tendency to see every problem as an opportunity for a more spectacular solution. Is a “drop in the ocean” of radiation truly just that, or do those drops accumulate in ways that only become apparent after the fact? As the outlet documents, even Haverly leaves some caveats unsolved.
Questions That Linger
Is a controlled hydrogen blast at the bottom of the ocean a stroke of genius, or just a darkly comic retread of mid-twentieth-century hubris? If the world is running out of time in the face of climate catastrophe, are we also running out of good ideas—leaving only the most dramatic options still on the table?
The record shows that the line between “peaceful” and “problematic” nuclear explosions has a way of blurring over time. One wonders what future historians—or whatever survives in the oceans—will make of it all.
