7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs
 

You might think of nuclear weapons as just the most fearsome weapon ever invented by humans, but that would be seriously underplaying their versatility.

Nuclear weapons aren't only good for leveling cities, they've also been used throughout the last 50 years for a variety of civilian purposes like stimulating natural gas production — and all kinds of innovative proposals have been slapped on the table to harness the awesome power of the nuclear blast for economic benefit.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...riendatom.html

I didn't realize that nuclear weapons could be created with minimal radioactive waste. That was actually pretty neat. I was honestly expecting the ideas to be more crackpot than they were.

isn't there an issue with nuclear fall out? won't the area be contaminated and radioactive?

You didn't read the whole thing, did you?

yeah isn't there an issue with 20 tonnes of nuclear fall out? i'd hate to be the miner, project manager, excavator, etc, to have to clean up the fall out or simply work in a place with more than just trace amounts of it