Project Gasbuggy

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title: "Project Gasbuggy" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["explosions-in-1967", "1967-in-the-united-states", "american-nuclear-weapons-testing", "american-nuclear-test-sites", "peaceful-nuclear-explosions", "history-of-rio-arriba-county,-new-mexico", "underground-nuclear-weapons-testing", "1967-in-new-mexico", "carson-national-forest", "project-plowshare-nuclear-tests", "code-names"] description: "1967 nuclear test explosion in New Mexico, United States" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary 1967 nuclear test explosion in New Mexico, United States ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox nuclear weapons test"]

Field	Value
name	Project Gasbuggy
picture	*Project Gasbuggy top placard.jpg
country	United States
test_series	Operation Crosstie
Project Plowshare
test_site	Carson National Forest
coordinates
date	December 10, 1967
test_type	Underground
yield	29 kt
previous_test	Polka
next_test	Stilt
::

|name = Project Gasbuggy |picture = *Project Gasbuggy top placard.jpg |picture_description = |country = United States |test_series = Operation Crosstie Project Plowshare |test_site = Carson National Forest |coordinates = |date = December 10, 1967 |test_type = Underground |yield = 29 kt |previous_test = Polka |next_test = Stilt

Project Gasbuggy was an underground nuclear detonation carried out by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on December 10, 1967 in rural northwestern New Mexico. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a program designed to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosions.

Gasbuggy was carried out by the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory and the El Paso Natural Gas Company, with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission. Its purpose was to determine if nuclear explosions could be useful in fracturing rock formations for natural gas extraction. The site, lying in the Carson National Forest, is approximately 21 mi southwest of Dulce, New Mexico and 54 mi east of Farmington, and was chosen because natural gas deposits were known to be held in sandstone beneath Leandro Canyon. A 29 ktonTNT device was placed at a depth of 4227 ft underground, then the well was backfilled before the device was detonated; a crowd had gathered to watch the detonation from atop a nearby butte.

The detonation took place after a couple of delays, the last one caused by a breakdown of the explosive refrigeration system. The detonation produced a rubble chimney that was 80 ft wide and 335 ft high above the blast center.

After an initial surface cleanup effort the site sat idle for over a decade. A later surface cleanup effort primarily tackled leftover toxic materials. In 1978, a marker monument was installed at the Surface Ground Zero (SGZ) point that provided basic explanation of the historic test. Below the main plaque lies another which indicates that no drilling or digging is allowed without government permission.

The site is publicly accessible via the Carson National Forest, F.S. 357 dirt road/Indian J10 that leads into the Carson National Forest.

Following the Project Gasbuggy test, two subsequent nuclear explosion fracturing experiments were conducted in western Colorado in an effort to refine the technique: Project Rulison in 1969 and Project Rio Blanco in 1973. In both cases the gas radioactivity was still seen as too high and in Project Rio Blanco the triple-blast rubble chimney structures disappointed the design engineers. Soon after that test the approximately 15-year Project Plowshare program funding dried up. |places= | caption = Project Gasbuggy detonation site In 2011, the United States Department of Energy reported that even after 25 years of gas production of all the natural gas deemed recoverable, only 15 to 40 percent of the investment could be recovered.

These early fracturing tests were later superseded by hydraulic fracturing technologies.

Gallery

| title = | align = | footer = | style = | state = | height = | width = | captionstyle = | File:Project Gasbuggy.jpg | The Project Gasbuggy placard. | alt1= | File:Gasbuggy Site Cross Section.svg | Cross-section of the Gasbuggy site. | alt2= | File:HD.8A.009 (11326097983).jpg | Gasbuggy nuclear device before emplacement. | alt3= | File:HD.8A.003 (11325913016).jpg | Artists impression of the test setup | alt4= | File:HD.8A.004 (11325913066).jpg | Predicted underground effects | alt5=

References

References

1. Metzger. (February 22, 1970). "Project Gasbuggy And Catch-85*: *That's krypton-85, one of the radioactive by-products of nuclear explosions that release natural gas Project Gasbuggy and Catch-85 "It's 95 per cent safe? We worry about the other 5"". New York Times.
2. [https://books.google.com/books?id=g9QDAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22project+gasbuggy%22&pg=PA102 Project Gasbuggy]. ''[[Popular Mechanics]]'', September 1967.
3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20081215133427/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899941,00.html A Good Start for Gasbuggy]. ''[[Time magazine. Time]]'', December 22, 1967.
4. "Project Gasbuggy".
5. [http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/NM3130/ Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site] {{Webarchive. link. (February 4, 2012 . [[Center for Land Use Interpretation]]. Accessed April 11, 2011.)
6. "Project Gasbuggy tests Nuclear "Fracking"".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::