Online Only Swords into plowshares

As I write this column, the early news reports are indicating that the exclusive nuclear club has, amidst global protest, gained its newest member: North Korea.\nMost of us aren't old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even much of the Cold War. "What's the big deal?" we ask. "Lots of countries have nuclear weapons."\nAn hour northwest of Las Vegas is a relic of the Cold War called the Nevada Test Site. There, in a 1962 test named "Storax Sedan," a nuclear device was detonated a few hundred feet beneath the surface of Yucca Flats. In a matter of seconds the blast moved 12 million tons of soil, creating a crater 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet across -- quite easily the most efficient feat of excavation ever achieved. It also shot a plume of radioactive dust and gas 12,000 feet into the atmosphere, which drifted east across the country creating low-level fallout. Immediately following the blast, radiation levels at the edge of the crater would have killed a man in under an hour.\nStorax Sedan was the first of many tests under a larger program called Project Plowshare. The purpose of the project was to develop peacetime uses for nuclear bombs. (You can just imagine some guy at the Atomic Energy Commission saying, "I wonder if we can dig really freakin' big holes with it.") The name Plowshare was drawn from 2 Isaiah, where the prophet, speaking of the Messiah, said, "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."\nThe Sedan project's goal was to test the utility of nuclear explosions in excavation. Dependent on Sedan's success, applications could have included widening the Panama Canal, cutting a waterway across Nicaragua and excavating an artificial harbor on the coast of Alaska. Eleven years and about $770 million later, Plowshare was abandoned for being impractical.\nIn January 2005, under the blessing of the Department of Homeland Security, I rode a bus across the frigid, windswept expanses of the Nevada Test Site to Yucca Flats. Wearing a personal radiation dosimeter and my Department of Energy ID badge, I stood on the lip of Sedan Crater and smiled for the camera. The return trip to Hoosierland offered ample time to ponder the history and sights of Yucca Flats.\nThe failure of Project Plowshare definitively demonstrated that there is no peaceful use for nuclear weapons. Contrary to Iranian propaganda, the only plausible use for nuclear weapons is to kill lots of people in a hurry.\nOn Aug. 22, North Korea declared the armistice between itself and South Korea to be "null and void." Recently, Kim Jong Il made clear his capacity to kill lots of people in a hurry with a nuclear test. It stands to reason that this man is a very real threat that must be dealt with. We can't pussyfoot around anymore. If he will not negotiate, it is time for action.