Created for the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, A FORCE TO MOVE THE EARTH profiles Project Plowshare, a Cold War era effort to find useful non-military uses for nuclear weapons, primarily in the field of mechanical engineering.

Project Plowshare, also known as Operation Plowshare, was the overall United States term for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes. The phrase was coined in 1961, taken from Isaiah 2:3–5 (“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”). It was the U.S. portion of what are called Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE).

Successful demonstrations of non-combat uses for nuclear explosives include rock blasting, stimulation of tight gas, chemical element manufacture (test shot Anacostia resulted in Curium-250m being discovered), unlocking some of the mysteries of the so-called “r-Process” of stellar nucleosynthesis and probing the composition of the Earth’s deep crust, creating reflection seismology Vibroseis data which has helped geologists and follow on mining company prospecting.Negative impacts from Project Plowshare’s 27 nuclear projects including nuclear contamination led to the program’s termination in 1977, due in large part to public opposition. These consequences included tritium contaminated water and the deposition of fallout from radioactive material being injected into the atmosphere before underground testing was mandated by treaty.