As the United States (and the world at large) found itself staring at tons of nuclear bombs that it wanted to threaten to drop but not actually drop on anyone after World War II, various scientific and civilian institutions tried to come up with creative, peacetime ways to use the weapons of mass destruction.

The most prevalent of these programs was Project Plowshare (alternatively sometimes referred to as Operation Plowshare or the Plowshare Program) from the United States' Atomic Energy Commission. From 1958 to 1975, the AEC conducted and planned a series of tests and uses for the arsenal the country had accumulated while the Soviets created and executed a similarly themed program.

Here's some of the suggestions for using nukes for peaceful purposes that came out of that time, almost all of which were (fortunately) abandoned before fruition.