While Project Chariot was never explicitly canceled and the AEC never admitted that the project was completely misguided and irresponsible, the proposal ceased to gain momentum. The truth of the devastation Project Chariot could have caused was finally realized. "This is how close the US and Alaska came to having their own Chernobyl catastrophe and the perpetrators of the plot were government employees of the AEC and the Lawrence Radiation Lab - people so intent on their own narrow goals that they would willingly have sacrificed everything within northern Alaska to achieve them," Hunter explained.