Project Rio Blanco | military, nuclear testing area

 military, nuclear testing area

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An underground nuclear test took place at this site in 1973, to investigate the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, the last in the Plowshare Program, called Rio Blanco, was performed by the Atomic Energy Commission and two corporate partners, CER Geonuclear and the Equity Oil Company, using three simultaneously detonated 30 kiloton bombs, each at the bottom of a shaft more than a mile deep. The blast was marginally successful in causing the gas to collect in the cavity and fissures produced by the bombs, however the gas was too radioactive to be sold commercially. A similar nuclear-device gas stimulation test, called Project Rulison, was performed nearby in 1969.

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