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A consortium of environmental scientists has expressed strong concern about the impact of a controversial Central American canal across Nicaragua.
The path of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Grand Canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will cut through Lake Cocibolca (aka Lake Nicaragua), Central America's main freshwater reservoir and the largest tropical freshwater lake of the Americas; this plan will force the relocation of indigenous populations and impact a fragile ecosystem, including species at risk of extinction, according to Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez and other members of the consortium.
Alvarez is co-corresponding author of an article that includes 21 co-authors from 18 institutions in the United States and Central and South America who gathered at a multidisciplinary international workshop in Managua, Nicaragua, last November to discuss the project. The paper, titled "Scientists Raise Alarms About Fast Tracking of Transoceanic Canal Through Nicaragua," was published this week by the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology.
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-scientists-nicaragua-canal.html
[Abstract]: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b00215
[Source]: http://news.rice.edu/2015/03/04/scientists-question-rush-to-build-canal-2/
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Friday March 06 2015, @03:56PM
Maybe US had plans, but USSR actually implemented them.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_uranium27.htm [bibliotecapleyades.net]
In summary, during its 20-year life, the U.S. Plowshare Program carried out twelve field experiments, six nuclear cratering events, and six contained explosions. Only four Plowshare events were conducted off the Nevada Test Site, one to better understand the effects of a nuclear explosion in salt and three for nuclear gas stimulation.
....
During a period of some 23 years between 1965 and 1988, the Soviet Union's "Program for the Utilization of Nuclear Explosions in the National Economy" carried out 122 nuclear explosions to study and put into industrial use some 13 applications.
So, if you are interested, read up. USSR used nukes everywhere. From rail construction to agricultural reservoir construction. Wikipedia only has a brief overview of the above paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion [wikipedia.org]