Luke Vortman during a pause in the interview while Michael Anne Sullivan reviews her notes.

On October 11, 2000, Carl Mora and Michael Anne Sullivan interviewed retiree Luke Vortman on his participation in Project Plowshare. He was interviewed for background material on Sandia's role in U. S. projects related to the peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. Vortman, who was employed by Sandia from 1949 to 1985, recounted a wealth of reminiscences and anecdotes concerning Plowshare.

Born of a unique combination of Cold War concerns, technological advances, and scientific initiative, Project Plowshare had a small but lasting effect on the history of atomic science in America. Designed to test the possibility of using nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes, the Plowshare program began in a secret meeting room in Livermore, California, but grew large enough to conduct over twenty-seven nuclear tests and to participate in large-scale engineering projects across the globe. The variety of tests performed for Plowshare included the 1960 Scooter test in Nevada which used a million pounds of TNT in the largest conventional high-explosive detonation in the United States.

The concept of Plowshare, from the scriptural exhortation to beat swords into plowshares (even though the latter were apparently not invented until about A.D. 700), has been credited to Edward Teller. Plowshare began in 1957 under the technical direction of the Livermore Radiation Laboratory (later Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).

Luke Vortman of Sandia led the team devoted to cratering engineering, using high explosives to learn how best to place nuclear explosives to perform excavation. Among the proposed nuclear engineering projects that Sandia assisted in examing were the excavation of a new canal through the Isthmus of Panama and a harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska.

Although today the idea that nuclear bombs could be used in digging and drilling seems fantastic, at the time, the prospect that nuclear devices could be put to non-military purpose seemed a worthy venture. In hindsight Vortman noted that Plowshare "…was a pretty wild idea." Yet he explained he stayed with the Program because "…if this effort was going to fly wouldn't it be great to be a part of it? Because you can't tell the future, …[a]nd it sort of relates back to that famous line in South Pacific, 'if you don't have a dream how are you going to make a dream come true?'"

Beginning as a program with high hopes and great expectations, Plowshare attempted to harness the powerful forces of nuclear energy to reshape the landscape of the earth. Yet the support for the peaceful use of nuclear explosives crumbled under the growing concerns over nuclear energy in America. Doubts about the sustainability of the program, beginning with the American public and then growing to include the federal government, gradually deprived Plowshare of funding and support. Despite its plagued history, however, Plowshare remains a significant chapter in America's nuclear history. As part of the story of America's nuclear complex, Project Plowshare stands as the most genuine attempt to use this most powerful of forces to achieve peaceful ends. *