Have you heard of the proposal to end the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by nuking the site? At DVICE, Kevin Hall writes about other engineering schemes that involved using the explosive force of nuclear weapons in peaceful (if perhaps crazy) ways. For example, if the Panama Canal is too narrow, just blast a wider channel with a few controlled explosions:
Link | Photo: US AID
We could have all grown up with the Pan-Atomic Canal instead of the Panama Canal we know today. That is, if Operation Plowshare ever took off (the government's term for using nukes in construction, including the highway-blasting idea above and the harbor you're about to read about below). Building the Panama Canal was a long, deadly process. Also many ships are too big to traverse the canal. To make everything easier, why not just nuke it wide open? Well, radioactive fallout was a huge concern, and that fear even scrapped plans to use atomic bombs to create entirely new canals.
Link | Photo: US AID