Siberian River Reversal by Nuclear Explosions

High in the Ural Mountains, in the south-eastern corner of the Komi Republic, the Pechora River rises. It descends from the slopes, flows briefly south, then bends and turns north. The river then continues more or less in the northerly direction for some 1,800 km until it empties into the Arctic ocean.

To Soviet planners, this seemed like a colossal waste. Why should a river the size of the Pechora—the third-largest in Europe by annual discharge, after the Volga and the Danube—pour its waters into the Arctic when they could irrigate the parched lands of the south?

From that question sprang one of the most audacious engineering schemes of the 20th century.

Map of all major Siberian rivers. Credit: Steve Wiertz

The roots of the plan lay in a longstanding Russian frustration. Immense rivers—the Ob, Yenisei, and Lena—flowed northward into the Arctic Ocean, where their waters were regarded, somewhat dismissively, as “wasted” in ice and tundra. Meanwhile, to the south, the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan demanded ever greater irrigation. The Caspian Sea, which is one of the Soviet Union’s greatest natural assets, had already begun to shrink leaving fishing villages and port facilities high and dry.

The notion of diverting Siberian rivers was not new. Engineers had floated canal schemes as early as the 19th century. But after World War II, nuclear technology gave the idea new life. The Soviet Union, eager to demonstrate peaceful applications of atomic power, launched a program in 1965 called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. It paralleled the American Project Plowshare, which similarly explored using nuclear bombs for civil engineering.

The most discussed proposal involved redirecting part of the flow of the Pechora River into the southward-flowing Kama River, a tributary of the mighty Volga. Once the canal was dug and the necessary dams constructed, part of the Pechora's water would have been diverted downhill into the Kama and thence into the Volga, which in turn flows into the Caspian Sea. Similarly, the Onega and the Northern Dvina would also be diverted into the Volga. On the Asian side, the Ob River and its major tributary, the Irtysh, would be linked in the same fashion to the Volga basin and onward toward Central Asia.

Perchora river and its catchment area. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Soviet planners argued that redirecting even a fraction of the northward flow of these rivers would boost irrigation in Central Asia, provide food for 200 million people and even restore the Aral Sea which had seen catastrophic water loss in recent decades.

The scale of the full river-reversal project was staggering. Estimates suggested that more than 250 nuclear explosions might be required to complete a Siberia-to-Central Asia diversion. The project was expected to take 50 years to complete.

In 1971, a test was carried out under the codename “Taiga.” Three nuclear devices, each about 15 kilotons, were detonated simultaneously to create a pilot canal section. Resident Timofey Afanasyev remembers the day well:

This happened on March 25, 1971. I lived then in Chusovsky. We were asked to leave our houses by 12 noon and warned: something is being prepared in the Vasyukovo area, and it is dangerous to be in buildings. We already knew that some big work was being done there, and the military had arrived. Of course, we didn’t know what exactly was being done. That day everyone obediently went outside. At exactly noon we saw in the north, in the Vasyukovo area, and it was twenty kilometers away, a huge fireball. It was impossible to look at it, it hurt my eyes. The day was clear, sunny, completely cloudless. Almost at this time, only a moment later, the shock wave arrived. We felt a strong swing in the soil — as if a wave had passed along the ground. Then this ball began to stretch into the mushroom, and the black pillar began to rise up, to a very high height. Then it seemed to break down below and fall towards the territory of Komi. After this, helicopters and planes appeared and flew towards the explosion.

The test created a chain of craters about 700 meters long. The explosions successfully demonstrated that nuclear blasts could excavate large volumes of earth. However, they also released substantial radioactive material into the surrounding area.

Nuclear lake. The site of the 1971 test explosion. Credit: Google Maps

From the moment serious discussions about river reversal began, there was serious opposition from scientists and experts, who warned that diverting vast quantities of freshwater into Central Asia would have unpredictable consequences. Northern ecosystems depended on river inflows into the Arctic Ocean. Altering them could affect ocean salinity, sea ice formation, and climate patterns throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

The project’s opponents warned that the scheme would inundate immense stretches of forest and disrupt historic northern ports such as Arkhangelsk. Northern agricultural lands would be flooded, river navigation temporarily halted, and fisheries severely damaged as salmon and other migratory species lost access to their freshwater spawning grounds. Some specialists predicted that ice would begin forming earlier and extend farther south along the rivers, delaying the spring thaw. In a region where the growing season was already brief, freeze-up could shorten it by as much as two weeks. Prolonged winter conditions, they feared, might also intensify spring winds and reduce essential rainfall.

More troubling still were the broader climatic uncertainties. Some scientists cautioned that if the Arctic Ocean were no longer replenished with freshwater, rising salinity could lower the freezing point of seawater and accelerate the melting of the ice cap, potentially contributing to global warming. Others warned of the opposite scenario: that reducing the inflow of relatively warmer river water might allow polar ice to expand.

The human cost would also have been immense. Across an area larger than Western Europe, tens of thousands of people stood to be displaced. Millions of acres of northern land, including vast tracts of productive forest and game habitat, would have been permanently submerged.

The delta of the Pechora river. Credit: GRID-Arendal

Eventually, the possibility of building canals to reverse the Arctic rivers began to look dim as the project cost ballooned. The Soviet economy, already straining under inefficiencies and military expenditures, could not easily sustain such a colossal undertaking.

In 1986, amid the reformist climate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership, and shortly before the Chernobyl disaster dramatically heightened public fear of nuclear technology, the Soviet government formally abandoned the northern river reversal project. After Chernobyl, any lingering enthusiasm for massive peaceful nuclear explosions evaporated.

Today, the craters from the Taiga experiment still exist in the forests of northern Russia. Groundwater has seeped in to form a lake around which mushrooms and berries grow abundantly, which are regularly collected and consumed by the villagers. The area is still radioactive (about 80 times higher than normal background radiation) and is expected to stay that way for another 300 years or so.

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References:
# Science: Saving the Caspian. Time
# Environment: Making Rivers Run Backward. Time
# The Soviet plan to reverse Siberia's rivers with 'peaceful nuclear explosions'. BBC
# Nuclear pit. Bellona