Oskar Morgenstern and Klaus-Peter Heiss · 1967
Prepared by Mathematica for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, this technical report synthesizes five specialized studies of Project Plowshare. Its five chapters move from economic evaluation and institutional questions through explosion phenomenology, device costs, and safety to analyses of shale oil, gas stimulation, copper mining, excavation, and supplementary applications. Morgenstern and Heiss argue that nuclear explosives could transform economically recoverable resources and the scale of construction. Their case is strongly favorable to development, but its estimates remain conditional on experiments establishing how explosive effects can become reliable industrial processes.
The introduction distinguishes projects that nuclear explosives could accomplish more cheaply from projects effectively inaccessible by conventional means. This distinction makes Plowshare more than a substitute for chemical blasting: it could change the range of feasible economic activity. Yet cheap energy alone cannot establish economic value. The decisive question is its conversion into useful work, together with the costs of emplacement, recovery, contamination control, and safety.
Major uncertainties that exist in regard to the economics of Plowshare arise not so much from the costs of nuclear explosions but rather from lack of more precise technical information on the utilization of the effects of nuclear explosions for specific applications and the lack of experiments in each of these fields.
This passage identifies the report’s governing method. Rather than supply a definitive profitability figure, the authors vary technical assumptions to expose controlling parameters. Their phenomenological account explains how deeply buried explosions create cavities, rubble chimneys, and surrounding fractures, whereas shallower detonations produce craters. These effects supply different industrial possibilities. Device charges rise slowly with yield, promising economies of scale, but drilling depth and diameter can substantially alter the advantage. The quoted charges are projections for routine commercial production, not established prices for an existing industry.
The institutional argument distinguishes commercial use from the development of a technology whose experimental knowledge benefits multiple industries. Ordinary market demand aggregates quantities horizontally; demand for shared experimental knowledge requires vertical aggregation of benefits. A firm may therefore decline an experiment that would be worthwhile for the economy as a whole.
The principal benefit being a collective one there arises another peculiarity: even if during the developmental phase of Plowshare the technology--still being tested--would not achieve immediate economic profitability, because of the inherent risk and uncertainty, the expected overall benefits warrant and justify further experiments by the government.
Government participation consequently has two foundations: control over nuclear detonations and support for research whose returns private investors cannot fully capture. The authors also distinguish firm expenses from national resource costs, treating royalties and profit taxes as transfers rather than straightforward additions to real production costs.
Safety qualifies the economies of scale. Radiation, seismic shock, ejecta, and airblast impose location-specific limits; larger yields may reduce direct costs while making safe execution more difficult. The report separates preventive studies and precautions from compensation after detonation. It also gives safety an opportunity-cost dimension:
Thus a certain set of areas or conditions are excluded for Plowshare projects completely.
Excluded projects represent foregone benefits, while weather restrictions and evacuation requirements can delay construction. The resulting concept of maximum permissible yield is conditional on geology, population, meteorology, and timing. Nevertheless, the authors’ confidence in manageable hazards often outruns their acknowledged lack of information, particularly concerning product contamination and decontamination costs.
The application studies show why no single economic verdict suffices. Shale oil offers the largest prospective resource gain, especially in thick Green River deposits, but requires an untested underground retorting process. Recovery rates, rubble dimensions, combustion control, water content, and compressor requirements govern feasibility. Sensitivity analysis shows that high pressure requirements can erase anticipated savings; the report also acknowledges that its projections omit difficult-to-estimate landscape and pollution costs. Gas stimulation requires a simpler subsequent recovery system, but profitability depends on induced permeability, gas quantities, drilling costs, discount rates, and radioactive contamination. Its principal promise is access to tight formations rather than cheaper production from existing commercial fields.
Copper mining sharpens the distinction between low unit costs and efficient resource use. Nuclear leaching may recover less copper than conventional mining, so savings per pound need not compensate for valuable metal left underground. The report finds selective opportunities in low-grade deposits, limited prospects for nuclear block caving, and stronger possibilities for nuclear stripping. Excavation likewise promises falling costs per cubic yard at larger yields, but canal-route selection must incorporate safety limits rather than direct costs alone. Gas storage, groundwater management, and waste disposal receive more tentative treatment: local geology and hydrology remain decisive, and waste disposal lacks proven economic advantage.
The conclusion frames research allocation as a portfolio problem. Shale oil combines exceptional prospective gains with exceptional engineering uncertainty; gas stimulation offers less spectacular gains through a simpler process. Experiments should therefore inform combinations of risk and return rather than merely confirm a predetermined ranking.
In many ways the present report opens up many more questions than originally it set out to answer.
The report’s relevance lies in this tension between technological advocacy and conditional economic reasoning. Its strongest conceptual moves concern shared research benefits, recovery-rate comparisons, safety constraints, and the distinction between cheap explosive energy and productive work. Together they make a case for experimental development, while leaving commercial feasibility contingent on evidence still unavailable in 1967.
This work was divided into 29 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 29 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian