a few weeks ago i was looking through
records in the british national archives
for a separate video idea that didn't
end up going anywhere but while i was
researching i found a completely
different report secret and restricted
when it was written but now unclassified
and it was the first time in a long
while that i've read some old archive
file and my jaw has literally dropped it
was called possible sights for
completely contained nuclear explosions
in north yorkshire
north yorkshire is a beautiful area that
includes two national parks this is the
middle of one of them it is stunning it
is historic it is not somewhere that i
expect anyone to try and set off a
nuclear explosion the report was written
in june 1969 so just for context we're
talking full space race white heat of
technology era neil armstrong would set
foot on the moon only about a month
after that report was written and the
report is talking about peaceful nuclear
explosions which was an idea that was in
fashion among some nuclear scientists
and policy makers at the time maybe the
theory went we could create artificial
harbors and canals using nuclear bombs
no more years of mechanical digging just
put a few well-placed nukes in the
ground and
there's your new canal or maybe you
could help stimulate production in gas
wells basically nuclear fracking or and
this was charitably the most practical
idea create enormous underground
cavities for gas storage instead of
having to use big above-ground tanks the
us did run a couple of dozen nuclear
tests like that under the rather
biblical title operation plowshare the
soviet union eventually ran more than
200 but those are stories that have
already been told by a lot of other
people by the 1970s the u.s and the
soviets would work out that it was a bad
idea if you use a nuke either for
fracking or to create underground gas
storage the radiation ends up
contaminating the gas
but until that was figured out well i
don't think many people have actually
noticed the records about it since it
was declassified but it turns out that
at least some people in the uk were
interested as well those people worked
at the gas council and the atomic
weapons research establishment and the
report shows that they were seriously
trying to work out if nuclear bomb gas
storage cabins were a good idea i kept
researching and found the commissioned a
full study laying out the pros and cons
comparing the cost to other methods of
storage
they had picked a site which was here
actually literally exactly there bottom
of that ravine wheeldale in the middle
of the north yorkshire moors national
park the plan was buy all the land for
about a mile around drill down 2000 feet
about 600 meters with a special extra
wide drill bit big enough so they could
drop a 25 kiloton nuclear bomb down to
the bottom of the hole i say drop lower
it's a big enough bomb to annihilate a
city in the open air plug up the hole
cover the top so nothing comes out
hopefully evacuate the thousand or so
people who live nearby just in case and
then um
not much would happen on the surface
it'd be a bit of a jolt in a rumble a
few birds startled into the air the
local towns of pickering and whitby
about 10 miles away each they'd feel a
minor earthquake and maybe a couple of
buildings would get a few small cracks
in them i'm not kidding that's what the
report actually says it just phrases it
a little bit more delicately than that
it's not clear whether the locals would
actually have been told what was going
on but i think it would have been
impossible to hide
after that they would let the giant
cavern that had been created
600 meters down cool for a few months
and then flush out remove most of the
radioactive stuff that was left behind
which it turns out would have been a lot
more difficult than they thought at the
time finally they'd put some pumpy
equipment in here at the top and presto
giant underground high pressure gas
storage tank for relatively not much
money and after a couple of years they
can sell most of this land back cost the
explosion in today's money adjusted for
inflation
about nine million pounds which is not
actually bad for a giant gas storage
tank i suspect that was a very
optimistic estimate though even that was
a bit more expensive than setting up
liquid natural gas storage above ground
but once you've made the cavern it's
much cheaper to run this way
if that is the explosion works as
predicted and if there's really no
radiation left over there were a lot of
risks now as far as i can tell this
never got anywhere near the prime
minister's desk there was never some
high up government meeting trying to
work out whether they should nuke a bit
of a national park
i suspect it would have been a very bad
political decision and a very bad
environmental decision and a very bad
financial decision and
look i'm sure there is some possible
alternate history where this happened
but things would need to have been very
different the last reference i could
find is from november 1969 the plan was
worked out in theory and the minutes of
the meeting from then say that further
thought would be given to what action
should follow and at some point in some
other record that i missed or maybe that
is still restricted i'm sure there'll be
a note that says they decided not to
pursue the idea peaceful nuclear
explosions would eventually be banned by
treaty conveniently just after the point
at which the u.s and russia found out
they weren't a great idea
and the north yorkshire moors thankfully
were never nuked