What, you mean, like American Machine and Foundry building nuclear reactors?

https://www.ans.org/news/article-1858/elk-river-rural-americ...

No, I mean using atomic bombs to manufacture these alloys at scale. In the 50s a-bombs were proposed for all sorts of workaday uses. Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

I am sure that somebody will take up the task of reproducing these alloys using intense heat from a non-atomic source. New alloys can be quite lucrative but developing them requires just as much experimentation as making new drugs. I'd imagine that getting to an alloy of 7 metals through progressive experimentation would take awhile. Now we know it's possible and have a possible production path. That is enough to spur some experiments down that road.

[deleted]

Both the US and the Soviet Union actually experimented with "nuclear fracking" in oil/gas fields. The Soviet Union also used atomic bombs to put out fires in gas fields as late as 1981.

They what?! Can we please get a link to this to read more?!

And yes, I have the same Google as you, but I'd love a link to your preferred telling of the tale of how the Soviets nuked a gas well fire just a couple years before I was born.

Soviets also blew up a 140kt bomb to make a lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shagan_(lake,_Abai_Region)

>Imagine using a small a-bomb for mining just as we use ANFO today.

Nuclear cement kiln

Nuclear pile jetter

Nuclear tunnel boring machine.