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Oil Leak Could Be Stopped With a Nuke
An anonymous reader writes "The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: 'The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well's channel.' It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
...Who solved the East front issue throwing at it 20 million human lives.
What could possibly go wrong?
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once.
Success rate does not illustrate simplicity, especially not with that small of a sample set. That could be the equivalent of saying, "Putting a man on the moon is so simple, in fact, that the United States has used their method once and it has never failed."
My work here is dung.
I don't think we have any orbital nukes. We would have to nuke it from orbit, as it's the only way to be sure.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What problems can't a nuclear explosion solve?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
...it's that any and all natural disasters can be stopped by the liberal use of nuclear weapons.
sounds perfectly safe, which such exhaustive data as a whole 5 attempts
I flipped a coin 5 times and it only came up heads once. The chance of you getting a heads when you flip it will be really small too.
... oil leaks were plugged with controlled underground nuclear blasts, according to this informative article.
But could a large conventional blast do the same thing?
Just sayin'
What a coincidence. I was just thinking that there are a number of problems in Russia that can also be solved with nuclear weapons.
If they were trying to seal the well I don't have much doubt that they could do it... and quickly. They tried (and failed) to secure an "oil collection device" that they sold to the news agencies as a "cap" but it is a "cap" designed to let them recover 85% of the oil that is spewing out. THEY DO NOT WANT TO CAP THE WELL. To permanently seal it off would mean they have to drill another one before they could start to profit off of this deposit again. Horrible ecological disaster, and we are still letting them try to profit off of it instead of capping it.
"...and it only didn't work once [out of five]..." - So what if the nuke creates an even bigger leak? Should we nuke it again? Btw monitoring abilities and thus reconnaissancein preparation for such a blast at those depths are extremely limited.
I'm trying to figure out which part of this story is the scariest.
... that someone has suggested setting off an underground nuke to close an oil well?
... finding out that the Soviets did this all the time?
... finding out that the USSR was so careless they had six "petrocalamities" worth trying this trick on?
... finding out that there's an actual word for an oil accident of this size?
Might as well nuke the area and start from scratch. But seriously, why does the explosion need to be nuclear.
great television! not to mention possible fall out 3 scenario, good thing i've played the game, it prepared me for this.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
I'm pretty sure the same suggestion was made in a /. comment a week ago. I'm not sure which I trust less.
Of Homer and Bart trying to fix everything around the house with fireworks.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Duct tape can solve almost anything. I think they need to look into this a bit ... plus its very inexpensive
Back in the late eighties, when the world was turned upside down by the fall of the iron curtain. my friends and I speculated that the fact that Reagan had survived assassination* had torn a hole in reality, thrusting us into a Bizarro Universe.
Now we have Russians suggesting something that only would make sense in a really bad TV movie or potboiler eco-disaster novel.
Like the man uptopic says, what could possibly go wrong?
We're there, man.
Stefan
* Schoolyard mythology: presidents elected in years ending in 0 always died in office.
For some reason I see many people in boats waiting to pick up all the dead fish that float up from the nuke blast. Sort of a super sized red neck fishing lure.
On a serious note, as others have said, there is a lot of methane down there. I remember seeing a deep sea sub video of the methane bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico. They captured it in a tube and the methane formed methane crystals due to the cold and pressure down there. Unless the plan is to cap the entire Gulf of Mexico to capture this methane, I would like to see a bit more informed planning.
The Gulf of Mexican? Honestly? I mean come on...
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Is the radiation from the blast better or worse than the oil leak? Or is it even a problem?
Loading...
As a pyromaniac extraordinaire I fully endorse this under one condition:
That a TON of high speed camera footage is available at no charge to me later. Outside of that I'm sold.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Nuke opens up a giant hole into the oil field.
Leak becomes 100000 times worse.
Fallout from the nuke (extreme heat) raises the oil temperature to the boiling point.
Oil rapidly reaches the surface and immediately ignites, setting the surface of the world's oceans on fire.
Since the hole is so big now, and the rate of leakage so massive, the world's oceans are quickly covered with the flaming oil, like a propane torch.
And you thought global warming was an issue with CO2.......
This would be like lighting a propane tank
I'm not particularly impressed by such a solution.
Was if they had used Chuck Norris to punch the well dry it would have caused massive earthquakes all over the world making what was shown in the movie 2012 looks like a grabage truck passing by.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
the fish are dying anyway..
this leaking well is (relatively) close to shore. couldn't an underwater blast cause a tidal wave that propagates as it travels toward land and shallower water? hmmmmmm good thinking russia.... just excellent!
Could somebody who reads Russian please check the original text from the Komsomolskaya Pravda?
Nukes aren't magic.
You could use conventional explosive. You just need more mass of explosive material.
Of course, if exploding the hole is determined to be the course of action, we must consider the ACTUAL after effects. It could very well be that convention explosives do more long term harm then a clean nuclear explosive.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig" By Sorcha Faal
Someone should get her on Fox News with Michael Brown, Dana Perino, and Rush Limbaugh.
...as do small ones.
"Nuke it" was the first thing I thought of when I heard about this leak.
Now I'm just trying to figure out if "great" or "small" applies in this case.
Nuke it from orbit!
This is just an excuse to Nuke the Whales.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Can be viewed here.
Synopsis: If the oil leak is in a desert where nothing of value is living anyway and it has been going on for several years and it shows no sign of stopping and you've tried just about everything else, then a nuclear blast could work. However, in the gulf of mexico it makes no sense because we haven't tried all that many things and the leak hasn't been gong on for several years and there's lots of things around of value, including people and marine wildlife.
of a natural gas fire can be viewed here.
Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore T.
P.S.: N.P.R. IS commercial radio !!
I think we should all just go into deep meditation and focus on causing an earthquake to close the well. Also, naked women cause earthquakes too, so maybe we could double up with this one.
Not today, I've another pair of pants to deal with...
Detonating nukes Idle. Why do I sound worried?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
It's the same method used for extinguishing fires in oil wells (using explosives), but now in a much larger scale.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Drill, baby, drill.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
I heard you like ecological disasters...
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
...oil nukes you!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
That's what first comes to your mind when you hear about nuclear explosions on the bottom of the ocean? Waves?
What about wakin' the motherfuckin' Cthulhu man? YEAH!
I guess you feel really silly right about now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In the Gulf of Mexico!
Best Slashdot Co
Uh, I'd like to move to the other side of the planet first before you set this off. Okay?
[signature]
We might actually nuke a gay baby whale for Jesus?
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Link, need I say more?
What fucking planet is this?
What? Use a Howitzer to kill a fly?
There are some oil wells in the Middle East that could also benefit from this solution, not that they are currently leaking.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I would have grave concerns about weakening the surrounding geology in a way that caused a massive rupturing of the wellhead. The geology of that area is incredibly diverse, with all kinds of different rock formations from different geologic era.
All you would need to do is set off a nuke in a well that had a lot of water or other gases dissolved in the rock, or distributed within it, and the heat would cause it all to instantly evaporate and blow the entire wellhead to smithereens, leaving a giant hole into the deposit with no hope of sealing it.
This is just an excuse to do more underwater nuke testing.
To stop an oil spill that's killing the whole Atlantic Ocean we can use an atomic bomb.
Why not adding also something that will add some thousands tons of CO2 a minute and spread some cloud of prions all over the atmosphere?
And then burning all the Amazon forrest?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I've been eating taco bell three times a day, every day, since this story broke. I'm ready to rip!!
You want this sucker plugged?
Call me: 1-800-MYT-WIND
Ve vould make the campfire with nooclear veapons. This is vy Russia alvays greater than American imperialist ambitions.
How do we know it won't make the hole bigger?
These are the folks who thought nuclear lighthouses were a great idea... http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-nuclear-lighthouses/ (and they were...except for the abandoned nuclear reactor part of it)
It created Godzilla! Or was it Cowboy Neal? I forget.
I went to college with the President's chief adviser, and in this case you don't want to trust a man who got a C in basic marine biology. The President's advisers are wrong, I'm right.
...Petrocalamities nukes YOU!
not nuclear reactors, actually, Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. Not that it makes that much difference if you get too close to one.
...I just couldn't resist the irony.
Wow...after having JUST witnessed a discussion that pretty well demonstrates how NO SINGLE ENTITY decided the outcome of the war...you chime in with an equally absurd stubborn insistence that it was the fault of a particular singular entity. Have you learnt nothing?!?!?! All contributing forces decided the outcome...all the effects are dovetailed!!!!!!!
We got lucky back then, let's keep pushing our luck.
Until he fukin' WAKES UP!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I support any plan that involves nuking the ocean. Perhaps the Chinese could package any ocean life killed into "tuna" cans. Topical image: http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/nukewhale.jpg
The problem they had was the methane freezing, all they need to do is warm it up a little. Problem solved.
That's a 20% fail rate. Pretty bad odds if you ask me...
When we're considering setting of a Nuke in the shaft of sea based oil bed, makes me want to get started on my bucket list, like right now.
For some reason reading this article made me think about the SNL commercial parody for Bad Idea Jeans.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10310/saturday-night-live-bad-idea-jeans
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Using nukes to for mining purposes (and that's what this is, more or less) is nothing new.
The article mentions that the USSR used nukes some 169 times to create canals or underground chambers. Within the US there was Operation Plowshare, where Edward Teller (inventor of the hydrogen bomb) got the idea to use nukes to create large deep water harbors, open up mines, level pesky mountains, or even carve a straight and level road across the Panamanian isthmus. It was never tried other than some proof-of-concept blasts. Some folks thought it might not be such a good idea to set of nuclear weapons like demolition charges. Wimps - no sense of adventure.
Those were software glitches in the robot they used to replace him :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Now this is the way to go fishing in the south.
Just line up the fish trawlers on one side of the Gulf and start scooping them off of the surface.
Fishing industry gets a bonanza and we seal a leak.
Oh, heck. Just drop a 48 tons of Creole seasoning in before the blast with a few hundred tons of corn and potatoes and we're done. We can just skip all the fisheries and just wait for dinner to come ashore.
But, I'll have to remember this next time we go fishing.
"No, sir mister warden. We weren't fishing with dynamite, we were just trying to plug an oil leak in the bottom of the pond"
Hey, I think I saw this SyFy original movie already. Doesn't it end with some part of our continent sinking or breaking off? Or is this the one with the prehistoric lizards which were hiding in the cave by the oil well, and the nuke only sets them free to cause more havoc? Was this the asteroid one?
Shit, I can never keep these straight.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
An underground nuke explosion could severely change the pattern of fractures in the surrounding oil fields. This could cause either an amazing boost of production, or the end of production for most of them. Unfortunately there is no way to predict which outcome is the more likely.
Furthermore, if 1 ton of TNT caused this, can you imagine the effect of a nuke ?!?
If every city had its own nuclear power plants, we wouldn't have to worry about drilling for oil, mining coal, greenhouse gases causing global warming, or having our forces in the middle east.
But its not going to happen.
Spmeone suggested using conventional explosives, but it would be hard to get a big enough bang at that depth.
One way to get a big enough blast however is to drop a large enough rock at high speed on the well. No radioactivity involved. (The rock that hit the gulf of mexico 65 billion years ago was just a bit too big so try something smaller)
Nuke Mexico
There were 27 so-called peaceful nuclear explosions in the US. one of the last in 1973 was supposed to fracture the ground in Colorado methane field to increase production. It has the contrary effect of melting a layer of glass underground and sealing off the methane. Russia used 115 bombs in similar tests . The seismic data they obtained is considered the best ever collected.
Perhaps it would release ALL of the oil at once while ignited instead of closing the hole?
So... the Russians are really out to take over America after all. We will swoop down and eat all the radioactive fish, killing off most of the country within 20 years. Then, Russia come, move in, and finally decide to get rid of all their nukes.
"So Jamie, there's a myth in a Russian newspaper that says you can plug an oil well with a nuclear bomb"
"We've got that pile of U235 left over from the radiation myth episode, let's skip the mock-up and go straight to full-scale."
I was so looking forward to my shrimp arriving with their own oil for frying but with nukes in play they will be well done upon arrival. And who knows maybe my teeth will glow in the dark after eating seafood loaded with radiation. That will look great when i'm dancing the epileptic boogaloo at the disco caused by brain damage from the contamination.
Not to mention, Hitler was a vegetarian.
I thought the most likely side-effect was the creation (or liberation) of giant monsters.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I believe more the issue is an oil pocket is contained between rock layers with the layers both extruding revealing some sort of "passage-way" for the oil, or a short drill in the case of a company like bp.
By using a nuke we end up with something like
--//---
----//-
---//--
(Ideally speaking the actual leak point or bedrock is offset to prevent the further spilling of oil. A large explosive may just mangle the top, where oil may again start leaking through later on...)
like to general oil drilling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drilling
But don't believe me I hated my Gen-ed geology and I will never admit to being an expert here.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
How many people would likely tune in to watch a nuclear bomb go off? Seriously, this could fix the problem, AND get tons of ratings and money for TV stations. Today's nuclear detonation, brought to you by new Uranium Doritos. Either that or Russia's secret plan of making the USA nuke themselves is back in action. Oil slick? Nuke it. Termite problem? Nuke em. Homeless guy asked you for change? Nuke him.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Ah. A source perhaps? http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/06/bp-oil-spill-conspir.html
I'm pretty sure sausage and beer would work for the vast majority of stereotype Germans, and those are the ones we want to kill right?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This is so obviously an attempted practical joke by the Russians. It's like the time my Dad told my uncle that break fluid makes a great car polish (Not! It does make a good paint stripper, though). You can imagine the laughs when my uncle fell for it. This is obviously the same thing, but on a slightly different scale... Oh those Russians and their sense of humour...
I clicked on the "Read More ..." link expecting to find a discussion of the pros and cons of using nukes as engineering tools. And all I find so far is a discussion that should have been Godwinned out of existence long before it reached its current state.
Over the past half century, there have been some interesting proposals for engineering uses of nukes. One of my favorites was only a short distance south of the current record-setting oil spill: The proposed sea-level canal across Central America.
There have been several analyses of the possibility of such a canal. It could be much wider, deeper and cheaper than the current Panama canal, which is too small for many of the largest ships these days. Most of the proposed sites go across southern Nicaragua, where the passes through the mountains are lowest and widest. Several of the proposals amounted to burying a chain of nukes in a line through the area, and setting them off. The result would be a chain of interlocking craters with bottoms below sea level. A bit more work with large bulldozers to even out the shore line, and we'd have a canal.
There were various reasons why funding for these projects (through the US Congress, of course) was eventually rejected. One of the funnier ones came from research biologists. They pointed out that the Caribbean is a few meters higher than the east Pacific, so there would be a slow but significant east-to-west current in the canal. This would carry not just water, but lots of biological material, from the Caribbean to the Pacific. (The other direction would also happen, but would be limited to a few good swimmers).
The biologists thought this was too good a scientific opportunity to pass up, and started submitting grant proposals to do the Pacific-wide baseline population studies that would be needed to understand the ecological catastrophe that would follow. They argued that we missed a good opportunity by not doing the studies before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was built, so we were unable to track in detail the catastrophe that exterminated the Great Lakes' fishing industry, as the sea lamprey ate up all the fish in the lakes. They didn't want to lose out on all the valuable biological data that would follow the much larger catastrophe after the seal-level canal in Central America pumped thousands of new species into the tropical Pacific.
After enough of these grant proposals were submitted and Congress learned about them, the funding proposals for the canal were quietly "misplaced" and no longer discussed. Some of the biologists followed up by talking about their great disappointment that they would not be able to study such a large-scale biological "experiment". They didn't much lament the loss to engineers by the loss of a project to do large-scale nuclear construction, though I suppose in private a lot of civil engineers must have also been shedding crocodile tears over this loss to their profession.
Using a nuke on the BP well wouldn't do anything so biologically spectacular, of course. But I can see biologists hurriedly asking for funding to study the effects on the Gulf ecology. If it could be done right, we could get a lot of useful information out of the experiment.
Anyway, I'm still hoping to read lots of comments about nuclear construction ...
(Lessee; do I need a smiley to deflect the moderators who lack the humor gene? ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Heh Heh Heh. I tell you I haff master plan! Now vee blow up zee nuke! No more Moose and Sqvirrel!
Booris! Vas Master Plan to set off nuke oaffer oil vell?
Off COURSE set off nuke oaffer oil vell! Vat else vee tell US?
Fearless Leader's zubmarine vas over oil vell, Booris.
Hoo Boy.
If nukes are going to be used for peaceful purposes, the first thing they should go for, is launching cities into outer space, ala project Orion.
Every problem looks like a nail.
(the Russians aren't the only ones: too many average 'Americans' will readily nod to a statement such as "We ought to just nuke the entire Middle East", etc.)
BUT... there is a point to this thinking. Sometimes a hammer does fix the problem... And it can be the smartest solution when time is of the essence.
According to this conspiracy theory, which includes Iran and North Korea (gotta love the creativity of these people), the US won't use nukes. Entertaining nonetheless.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1367.htm
"the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
I think the lesson that can be learned here is that you need to use 5 nukes all at the same time to guarantee success.
You know, just to be sure.
I'd like to suggest that we take our advice on using nukes from someone with a little more credibility than "anonymous."
is about as sensible and letting them set economic policy meaning, dont be a fucking idiot
Presumably they did that prior to the London Dumping Convention which would prohibit using a nuke now: http://www.imo.org/home.asp?topic_id=1488
I am pretty sure an air burst of sufficient magnitude would have put out those pesky fires in California.
However dealing with the political fallout would not be pleasant.
Also there would be real fallout.
...oil wells are afraid to leak.
Couldn't refuse a chance to start a Soviet Russia joke thread...
A job for Aquaman, Sub-Mariner, etc... and all the other lame superheros...
I bet they were just waiting around, being made fun of by all their superhero friends...
Now they can show them!
...It will probably work against the volcano on iceland. In fact i'd like to go as far as to advocate it as a universal problem solver.
Wall street crashing? Bail them out with nukes. Investors complaining? Invest nukes in them. Invasive species? Spray the land with thermonuclear omnicide. Bad weather? Seeding some mushroom clouds will solve that. Too much fallout? Blast it into orbit.
See, works for everything!
Lisa: “Nuke the whales”? You don’t really believe that, do you?
Nelson: I dunno. Gotta nuke somethin'
Lisa: Touché.
-The Simpsons, “Lisa’s Date With Density”
The belief that you know a thing is a most perfect way to prevent learning.
Yeah, those stupid Russians. Nothing like that could ever happen here in the god-fearin', freedom-lovin', capitalist United Stated of America.
Except Centralia, PA has been burning for about ten years longer than Hell's Gate, comprises 400 acres (and growing) versus Hell's Gate which is barely the size of a basketball court, and is expected to continue to burn for another 250 years.
Please help metamoderate.
but they could have resources to attack Gibraltar, entering Spain in the war as a agreement to reclaim Gibraltar. After that the axis would close the Mediterranean to the Brithish and the Allies, helping the all war to the axis field and making things harder for the British
Of course, that would mean that Spain would finally try to take Portugal (the oldest British ally treaty in Europe), the Brititsh would invade/help Portugal (doesnt matter if they wanted help or not), forcing the axis to help Spain (it was weaker than Italy, specially after the civil war). History tells that Portugal is hard to conqueror and keep and would be very useful foothold for a ally invasion to
If Portugal fall in to axis hands, Europe would be a locked in in the axis hands, the the allies would invade Azores to secure a key strategic point in the Atlantic and then probably, the North of Africa would be easy to take from the British. Most middle east were anti-British, so easily for the axis to gain more allies if the British started to lose. Taking the oil from the middle east, the axis would gain a new force and could even attack the URSS from 2 fronts
without the easy access to the rest of the colonies and oil, the British would lose its strength. Argentina and other central and south America countries, more related to the Hitler regime, might even try to take British lands, making it even weaker.
it would then be a matter of the US, URSS, the rest of British "lands" (specially India and Australia) and China against the Axis
if Portugal didnt fall, Spain would be a "new" Italy, using axis resources needed elsewhere and at very least, German troops passing by the "free" France zone would be targed by the resistance
In war, small changes may make huge difference in the outcome of the battles, so this is all "what if"!
Higuita
Here is an interesting video showing how the Soviet union used a small nuclear detonation to seal off an out of control gas well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU#t=23s It was part of the Soviet Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy programme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy), which used over a hundred nukes to experiment with peacetime use of nuclear explosions, and even a few direct applications that were not only experiments.
"And it only didn't work once."
I have a method that's much more effective.
Stuff the hole with former Soviet government officials.
You know, the ones who think an 80% success rate at stanching calamities is par.
In Soviet Russia? Nothing? What the fuck is going on here?
And duct tape. Don't forget duct tape. NASA doesn't.
http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/NASA/
"Sea Lion was a fantasy"
Absolutely. Germany lost because of Hitler's greed and impatience. The Kriegsmarine was formidable in many ways, but wasn't very good at power projection abroad. Germany didn't have much of a conventional fleet compared to the Royal Navy and the US Navy, and didn't have much in the way of amphibious forces either. The Kriegsmarine's biggest strength was its sub force, which is good for causing havoc with surface shipping, but useless for invading other countries... subs couldn't do the things surface warships did, such as massive gunnery support for beach landings. The Kriegsmarine was best suited as a defensive weapon for European waters, not a power projection force like the American fleet.
Hitler's main military strength was his land forces, suited almost completely for continental control. Had Hitler stopped short of Russia, and simply maintained an aerial and naval stalemate with the British, then the Nazis likely would have won the European war. Britain couldn't keep up on it's own forever, and Stalin wasn't going to attack Hitler... he was rather in awe of the guy, in fact. Had Hitler stopped at that point, it's likely that the lingua franca from Paris to Warsaw today would be German.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
1) My admiration for the pure guts of such an approach (talk about outside the box thinking)
2) My shock that a 20% failure rate using nukes to treat petrocalamities is seen as acceptable.
From the parent article...
Happily, with a track record like that, “the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%,” KP writes. “The Americans could certainly risk it.”
Puts to shame those guys that still only toss a stick of dynamite in the lake during their fishing trip.
"In 1940-1 Germany had enough air power to do the job. I wouldn't call it supremacy, but the Battle of Britain was a draw in Germany's favor, it's just that the Germans didn't understand that well enough to keep pushing"
Completely disagree. For one, while the German fighter force was outstanding before the BOB, the Luftwaffe got the worst of it and lost too many experienced pilots in those fights. Second, Germany never developed a proper long range bomber force, nor a truly effective aerial supply operation. The last was very obvious at Stalingrad, where Goering promised Hitler that he could keep German forces supplied, and the Luftwaffe failed at this utterly. They simply didn't have the cargo capability needed for long range supply missions. As I said in an earlier thread, German forces were perfect for the continental domination of western Europe, but were ill suited for long range operations. And in the case of the BOB, they also woefully underestimated the power and impact of radar until it was too late.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
Okay, so at least a 20% failure rate then... sounds great, where do we sign up? [/sarcasm]
They drilled too deep... hit a pocket, created an incident that can be negated (with a level of uncertainty) by a nuke. Damn this sounds familiar...
Then I could deal with a radioactive oil slick. At least I could still tan at night.
We have better explosives than back then, I'm sure a side well drilled and a sufficient shaped charge could shove the well shut.
The problem is that BP is in recovery mode, not stop the leak mode.
The Russians aren't even the first to suggest this. It's brought up at Pure Energy Systems. Considering the source, the views there should be taken with a grain of salt; it seems that they're probably overstating things a bit. Then again, maybe not so much, since the well does seem to have blown-up a platform and somehow foiled a "foolproof" blowout preventer.
So it seems that a large explosion to collapse a good bit of the well shaft suddenly would be a great way to stop the leak, rather than the half-assed methods tried so far. Does anyone seriously believe that dumping junk on the wellhead will accomplish anything meaningful, other than depositing even more waste into the ocean?
So the way to stop a leaking reserve of tens of millions of oil and ten times that in natural gas, all of which is under intense pressure, is a large nuclear explosion. Just like they did in Soviet Russia. Thank you, Slashdot, you're the best. Now, there's a huge, terrible Space Goat on its way to eat this planet of ours, and we need your story submitters and editors to get on a rocket ship and get out there to do something about it, somewhere out there. Very, very far out there. The telephone sanitizers and marketing execs will be keeping you company, of course.
the story is missing a "what could possibly go wrong?" tag!
"...it only didn't work once..." Enough said.
I think I liked the russian duct-tape-and-nuke approach more.
some folks have no sense of humor.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Nice and simple.
Just fyi, a friend of mine works for the company that is drilling a relief well into the same reservior. It is not BP. Drilling started almost immediately after the leak started, because the cost of drilling is nothing compared to the leak and environmental cleanup fees.
However they are still a month away from it being functional.
Having the same guys, who can't even run a nuclear reactor...Chernobyl, provide a "clean up" solution.
Wasn't this the plot COBRA used to create their base island in the gulf? Do we need to worry about Blackwater/Xe becoming more powerful?
The telephone sanitizers and marketing execs will be keeping you company, of course.
It must be Tuesday. I never could get the hang of Tuesdays.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Yes, let's use blowing things up as a strategy...that always works, lets crash satelittes into the moon, lets...sounds like the beginning of a bad sci-fi movie....if the russians really did this 5 times before already, i guess it must make it ok, right?
Why do we always resort to blowing things up...i tend to think the oil coming out might make it easier on us in terms of available oil, and give us a break with soaring gas prices by now taking out all the oil out of that well....and refining it, or course that would cost money.....BP is really a f*cked up company if you ask me....i hope they all burn in hell for what they did, but i also think Obama, should step in, say this is ours now...and clean up the mess using better tactics, and not only seperate the oil from the water to refine it, but also suck up all the oil in that well and keep it...BP screwed up big time, they should pay for it, not let the tax payers foot the bill.
You don't really believe that, do you?
I don't expect that you will be willing to personally pay the consequences of not deep water drilling. Modern society is all about the watts, not the joules. Planes don't take off unless they have enough horsepower, people all want heat, lights, refrigeration, going to and from work at roughly the same time. All oil production is spoken for already and peaking, now you want to start cutting it?
You have no fucking clue about what you are talking about, yet you want to make "executive decisions" like cutting off oil at the margins. Douches like you don't want to let us drill known reserves in Alaska, or off California, and now you want to say no to deepwater too because you personally do not understand oil production, one of the most complex and important industries on the planet? Instead, you want to cover farmland with transmission lines for your precious stupid windmills (which you also don't understand) with a fraction of the power output, and do it with copper wire you won' t let anyone dig for. You won't let anyone in America build more nuke plants, meanwhile the rest of the world, including your favorite country (France) is covered with them and the Chinese are laughing in your face while they sell you the rare earths (85% of world supply) for your stupid windmills at the same time they buy up rights to all the world Uranium they can because they actually let engineers run their fucking country instead of lawyers and crooked businessmen skilled in the arts of gulling stupid liberal dingbats and self-proclaimed scientists with their heads up their asses.
Do people really try to stick their noses into the technical and economic issues of energy production without educating themselves first?
People Do.
Well, ok, besides the fact that once the well is closed, they *might* not be allowed to drill again, but it seems like it would be smartest to close/destroy this well, then drill again (this time making sure not to blow up the oil rig). If I were BP, I think I'd rather stop losing the oil into the ocean, because even if they can recover some of it, they certainly can't recover all of it, and the longer the crude leak continues, the more 'damages' (as in lawsuits) rack up. I really think I'd like to stop my liability if I were BP.
Put Dick Chaney and several Haliburton execs in a sub and send them down to do it....just make sure that it is in a Kaiten!
My god. Is there anything that nuclear weapons can't fix?
nuke a gay whale for jesus
Just nota bene... As a russian i identify "Komsomolskaya Pravda" as yellow press.
Haven't studied the history of such techniques, don't wanna find out if a total "duck" got slashdotters discussing
I was really thrilled - to put it very mildly - by TFAs offhand quote that the ol' SSSP used nukes about 165 times (read that again) - for everything from making space for keeping gas, to digging channels, to closing runaway oilwells.
Funny. I'm not totally uninformed. I knew about soviet mobile nuclear power reactor station tractors. But, 165 engineering nuke blasts ? Come on. What are the historians doing ?
I still think it's going to be call as just another bogus in the KP's long list of "accomplishments" in the field.
the number of social situations is it incapable of solving approaches zero.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0696.html
I lived in this city from 86 till 91 and I tell you something, living in a place where a nuclear explosion happened (well, a few km away from the city, not right in it) is memorable. 1.7KT bomb was used and they wanted to use a few more but the first one went bad (aren't they supposed to) and they stopped it.
It's not the greatest idea ever.
You can't handle the truth.