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Obama Sends Nuclear Experts To Tackle BP Oil Spill
An anonymous reader writes "The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the 'catastrophic' flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation. The five-man team — which includes a man who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 1950s — is the brainchild of Steven Chu, President Obama's Energy Secretary." Let's hope this doesn't mean they actually try the nuclear option. In other offshore drilling news, reader mygoditsfullofdoom informs us that a Venezuelan gas rig has sunk in the Caribbean (with no loss of life). This one is being laid at the feet of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, which hasn't exactly been regarded as uber-competent "after President Hugo Chavez fired half the company's managers and senior engineers following a 2002 strike."
They are planning to use the LHC to create a small black hole and drop it into the gusher to suck up all the oil.
I think that would silence the critics of both the LHC, the oil drilling industry, and Apple's restrictive rules about apps!
Let's hope this doesn't mean they actually try the nuclear option.
Thanks for the environmental message. A little late for that, don't you think?
At this point, a small controlled nuclear explosion to simply fuse the entire mass together into a big piece of molten glass and metal might be what's needed.
When Reagan broke the ATC union, he was standing up to the Big Bad Union. When Chavez did it, he was being an autocratic commie.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I've always liked the phrase "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is". I think it's rather pertinent here!
Lets face it, this is the US way. I remember countless jokes about the Mir space station that after years of faithful service was retired while the space shuttle was blowing up all over the place. When you can't be proud of your own stuff, ridicule what others do. It works.
The Venezuela incident seems without side effect so far, and the firing of all the engineers and directors? Well, BP didn't and that one blew up... so what is the relation? But no worry, logic has nothing to do with propaganda.
What do you expect from a country where fox-news is not a contradiction in terms?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The people in charge were obviously told that in order to fix a problem of such scale, experts with new clear perspective were needed.
Ezekiel 23:20
Blowing something up is always the best option. Detonating a large fuel reserve to stop it from leaking makes perfect sense to me. Absolutely nothing to worry about.
I'm sorry, but I don't see a big problem with the "nuclear option". Underground nuclear explosions have been used quite a bit and they are not a significant radiation hazard. The geology of the area is presumably also fairly well understood. I wonder, though, if they even need a nuclear bomb. The drill hole is tiny compared to the 3 miles of rock it goes through. I would think even a conventional explosive placed some distance to the drill hole about a mile or so down into the rock might be enough to shift the rock and seal it off with little risk of making things worse. In any case, it's good to see people besides BP employees are on the case.
The Russians also thought that this would work.
They don't exactly have a flawless track-record when it comes to this sort of thing.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
No.
There are dozens or hundreds of industry people working to solve/address the problem (at a minimum, they are working on the relief well, which has a very high probability of success, it will just take 2 months to complete).
These 5 people had a meeting where they were briefed in on the specifics of the problem.
Corruption and lack of imagination are not the problem, the sheer difficulty of the situation they have put themselves into is the problem.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It stopped the methane from leaking into our atmosphere, so it did work.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I think we should do it just so that some accountant at BP has to enter "Cost of nuclear warhead" into their excel spreadsheet. At least that way we can get a laugh out of this.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Pop quiz:
Britain declared war on Germany ___ days after the German invasion of Poland.
Venezuela has invaded ___ allies of the US.
I am in Venezuela and can tell you that the rig incident in Venezuela was handled much more gracefully than what they show in that link. They managed to break the main pipe and close it before the platform leaned over. The captain of the platform, who is American by the way, was congratulated by Chavez in public TV since he stayed until the very last moment on the platform, only jumping into the water after the platform was over a 45 degree inclination angle. The Venezuelan navy also did a pretty good by-the-book rescue operation, so I don't know why is there so much negativity in the reports I see in the links posted. As far as the problem in the US, I kind of disagree bringing a nuclear physicist to do what can probably be solved by an emergency contract with the Norwegians, by far the best of the world in that field. But I guess when there are no tried solutions, a good idea counts no matter where it comes from.
Recruiting a team from an unrelated field is quite different from them doing anything bloody useful.
How is it that you translate the fact that no one has every tried to plug a leak like this in these depths to mean the oil industry is corrupted?
Or do you think BP's shareholders would be contempt with standing around and doing nothing while millions are wiped off the company's value?
+whatcouldpossiblygowrong
Using nukes will make it a small problem for a long term rather than a big problem for a small time.
Sounds like something are shortsighted business and political leaders would be interested in.
Oh yea, and +whatcouldpossiblygowrong
So the oil still flows, and the government has to step in for what should be a problem solved by the private sector that has claimed they are more than capable of regulating themselves. The private businesses that are destroyed from Louisiana to Florida due to BP negligence will be limited to fighting over the $75 million dollars, hardly enough when all your memorial weekeend guests have cancelled.
Here is the thing. I am one of the few people not in the oil industry that will actively defend the high price of gasoline, and even say it go higher. Oil production is risky, and the rewards should be commiserate. What I find maddening is that when the risk does manifest, the executives claim they have no money to pay for liabiliy. BP has made a profit of 5.5 billion this quarter. It is only natural that all that is forfiet to pay for the accident. That is how the free market works. As long as one is efficient and keeps one nose clean, one can make a huge profit. On big mistake an put one out of business. We should not be making laws to protect incompetent firms, any more than we should have laws to protect incompetent employees.
And for those who think there is a greater competency issue in the Venezuela explosion, remember that BP is responsible for the death of 11 good people, while no one died in the Venezuela situation. If you think that killing people is competent, something is wrong.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There's at least three "The Problem"s here.
1. Stopping the existing leak.
2. Cleanup and damage mitigation.
3. Figuring out what is and isn't reasonable to attempt for oil drilling in the future.
Maybe there's a meta-problem, which is that people will eventually do one, but then act like two is solved as well, and not even bother to address three.
Who is John Cabal?
Contrast this with South America, which is populated by 3 types of people: un-educated peasants, druglords, and warlords.
Oh, at least 4! You're forgetting the resident agents of the appropriate US government department who've spent the past 50+ years trying to keep them that way.
I spent a number of years as part of a team testing nuclear devices. They could be used as Russia has done to cut this off but at a mile deep I'd be worried to death about the potential for unexpected side effects. It may be the only option we have given the current failures but the chance of a catastrophic failure is far more likely than the LHC producing a large black hole.
If we allow Venezuela
Fuck off
I'd like to apologize on behalf of the people in my country, the United States. We're extremely paranoid, uneducated, and religious, and our entire every day consists of being endlessly pummeled by sophisticated government and corporate public relations/propaganda, making us impressively easy to manipulate. We do indeed have the mindset that we (as a country) have an inherent, God-given right to allow or disallow Venezuela (or anyone else in the world, for that matter) to do anything, and there's no real sign that we'll cease acting on that mindset anytime soon.
It may have a chance to work on land based situations, but it can also cause a major disaster.
In the mexican gulf there is a lot of hydrocarbons dissolved into the water, and there is a risk that you can get this "mint in a soda" effect if you are unlucky. And on a gigantic scale. In worst case it can be a termination event. It may not be that, but there is still a risk of a tsunami and other nasty things to happen if things goes wrong. Imagine New Orleans and a large area along the south coast of the US drowned again...
The fishing industry may be in deep trouble for decades due to this accident regardless.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Are they trying to plug the leak, or are they really trying to salvage the bore there and get back to pumping oil?
The reason I ask is..why not a chernobyl style containment effort. Drop a 200 (whatever, hugemongous, the biggest they can move) ton solid concrete and steel cube on that thing, then add to it, until the leak totally stops. The first big chunk would smash the pipe flat, effectively sealing it.
It has looked to me right along as more an effort to salvage what they did so far, not actually just plug it up.
You have also a burning coal mine in the US that has forced at least one town, Centralia, PA to be more or less abandoned.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
There is no shortage of examples of times when outside intervention is not only warranted, but should actually be mandatory.
Yes, that's why I told you to fuck off. The Iraq civil war might have been prevented if bullies like you were convinced to fuck off instead of invading it for Windmills of Mass Destruction.
Well, if we use oil drillers to use nukes to stop an asteroid catastrophe, it only makes sense to bring in the nuclear scientists to deal with an out of control oil well.
well, doing some quick back of the napkin math
he put no more than 1/20th of a gallon of oil into that container and said it took 1 pound of hay to clean that up.
The explosion and resulting leak happened 25 days ago.
It's been leaking about 50k barrels per day according to recent (non-computer scientists) estimates.
At that rate, it's going to require ~525,000 tons of hay.
According to a quick search for some kind of US hay production values, in 2008 we produced about 145,000,000 tons in 2008
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Missouri/Publications/Brochures/Hay_Facts.pdf
Although noting is said about how much of that was used to feed livestock. However I suspect that it was most of it.
So this would be less than half a percent of the US annual hay production. That doesn't seem completely unrealistic to me. Difficult and our infrastructure is likely not set up for this kind of thing, sure, but not flat out unrealistic from some 10 minutes worth of estimating. Add in other realistic aspects of the situation however, and things could get out of control pretty easily, but I would at least say this warrants further exploration of this idea.
Mow Your Lawn For Saving The Sea action? ...in no time.
Every white picket fence house donating some hay?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
As a far better article over at PopSci notes, the team includes a variety of physicists and engineers, only two of whom have done anything in the nuclear field.
While Richard Garwin did design the first proof-of-concept H-bomb way back in 1951, he spent most of his career at IBM, and held a symposium after the first Gulf War on how to close all those burning oil wells in Kuwait.
And although Tom Hunter has a couple degrees in nuclear engineering and is (until he retires in July) director of Sandia National Lab, his strengths appear to be more in the area of managing "big science" these days.
George Cooper, Alexander Slocum and Jonathan I Katz, though? Not nuke guys.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
from that everything ever is physics.
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This should not be modded flamebait, kdawson is pushing his opinion into the main post rather than in a comment like everyone else. Clearly, he's a biased editor, this isn't a discussion, it's a fact. You can not, BY DEFINITION, put your opinion into an article and NOT be biased.
Anyway, why shouldn't we use the nuclear option to control the oil leak? This is an ENGINEERING problem, not a fucking moral one. Let the engineers decide of a nuclear bomb would best control the oil leak.
Nonsense statements like "nuclear weapons are always bad" don't help anyone. According to the previous article on slashdot the Russians have used nuclear blasts five times to control things like this with an 80% success rate. Obviously, there are risks and problems, just like there are with every option. If the ENGINEERS (not idiots that think "nuclear ANYTHING is ALWAYS bad") decide that a nuclear blast is the best option then we should go for it.
Tell me, kdawson, where did you get your degree in nuclear engineering? You don't have one? Well then how about your degree in environmental engineering? No? Then how can you say that the nuclear option is a bad idea before trained scientists that actually know what they're doing have even evaluated the situation?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
God bless the USDIA and their evil overlords the CIA plus the DEA who keeps the warlords in business.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Wait, what? No, really? He's back?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Obama should just issue an executive order dissolving the corporate charters of Transocean and the US subsidiaries of BP using his authority to protect our territorial waters.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.