Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud, a well-known activist and scholar, died recently at age 83 in State College.
To people of a certain generation, her name was synonymous with opposition to nuclear energy.
Her activism ranged from the creation of the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power, which fought against the licensing of Three Mile Island, to assessing the biological effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Johnsrud’s first anti-nuclear campaign came in 1967 when she successfully derailed Project Ketch, an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) proposal to explode a 24-kiloton atomic device 3,300 feet underground to create a cavernous storage facility for natural gas in Clinton County, Pennsylvania.
When I first read about Project Ketch, it sounded too bizarre to be true.
Not only was it true, but Project Ketch was one of about 26 similar projects under the umbrella of Project Plowshare, an AEC initiative aimed at developing peaceful uses of atomic energy.
No less a personality than Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, was a proponent of developing “the friendly atom.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower called it “atoms for peace.”
Controlled thermonuclear explosions could dig canals, create mountain passes for railroads or mine ore, the thinking went.
The Storax Sedan blast at Yucca Flats in Nevada in 1962, for example, displaced 12 million tons of earth and created the largest man-made crater in U.S. history.
Another initiative, Project Chariot, would have created an artificial harbor on Cape Thompson, Alaska.
Project Gasbuggy used underground nuclear blasts to release natural gas from rock formations in New Mexico. There were two other similar tests in Colorado, a kind of nuclear fracking.
The idea was to ship the Colorado gas east to Pennsylvania, where it would be stored in underground caverns created by the nuclear blasts.
Johnsrud led the fight that ultimately stopped Project Ketch, signaling the beginning of the end of Project Plowshare. In large part due to her efforts, Plowshare was defunded by Congress.
Perhaps more importantly, Johnsrud proved that citizen opposition could derail a project conceived at the highest levels of government.
Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or rdevlin@readingeagle.com
———
©2014 the Reading Eagle (Reading, Pa.)
Visit the Reading Eagle (Reading, Pa.) at readingeagle.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Topics: t000002572,t000002537,t000002571,t000002576,t000040348
First Published: May 30, 2014, 11:04 a.m.
