right|thumb|250px|One of the Chariot schemes involved chaining five thermonuclear devices to create the artificial harbor. The illustration shows both the original extent of excavation, and a reduced scope.
Project Chariot was a 1958 United States Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices.
thumb|Aerial shot of Chariot, AK, located near Cape Thompson, the proposed site of an artificial harbor to be created using chained nuclear explosions. The project originated as part of Operation Plowshare, a research project to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. Substantial local opposition, objections from physical and social scientists engaged in environmental studies, and the absence of any credible economic benefit caused the plan to be quietly shelved.
thumb|Aerial shot of Chariot, AK looking to the east
History
A 1957 meeting at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL) proposed a program to use nuclear explosives for industrial development projects. This proposal became the basis for Project Plowshare, administered by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Chariot was to be the first Plowshare project, and was imagined as a way to show how larger projects, such as a sea-level Panama Canal, or a sea-level Nicaragua Canal, might be accomplished.
As the plan developed, relatively small explosions in Nevada, Repeated visits to the community by AEC officials failed to sway local and Native residents, who opposed land transfers by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the AEC. The opposition to Project Chariot that emerged from Point Hope launched a period of Native political organization and activism that led directly to the passage of the landmark Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
Plan
The project initially envisioned the use of four 100 kiloton devices to excavate a channel, and two one-megaton devices to excavate a turning basin, for a total of 2.4 megatons of explosive equivalent, displacing of earth. Later iterations reduced the explosive total to 480 kilotons, and subsequently a 280 kiloton test or demonstration.
Small-diameter boreholes drilled to measure soil characteristics were remediated in 2014. The five boreholes, drilled in the early 1960s, had used refrigerated diesel fuel as a drilling fluid, contaminating the surrounding area.