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Gulf Oil Spill Nearing Loop Current
An anonymous reader writes "Per The Weather Channel's tropical expert Dr. Richard Knabb, 'based on satellite images, model simulations, and on-site research vessel reports, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the oil slick at the surface is very near or partially in the Loop Current. The Loop Current is responsible in the first place for extending that stream of oil off to the southeast in satellite imagery. With its proximity to the northern edge of the Loop Current it may be only a matter of weeks or even days before the ocean surface oil is transported toward the Florida Keys and southeast Florida.'" Other experts are a little more cautious: "We know the oil has not entered the Loop Current," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."
Assuming it worked at stopping the continuing spill, what would be the negative effects?
British Petroleum would lose the well permanently and have to drill a new one.
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BMO
"A leading edge sheen is getting close to it, but it has not entered the Loop Current. The larger volume of oil is several miles from the Loop Current."
Oh, so the inevitable hasn't happened yet. That's so reassuring.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
And what exactly do you think that a nuke will do?
The problem is that there is a massive oil reserve deep underground that is under extreme pressure, but contained by rock and dirt. BP has tapped into that reserve with basically a giant straw and now that straw is leaking. Detonating a nuclear bomb near the leak could open that hole up wider allowing much, much oil to flow past.
Furthermore, AFAIK, the effects of a nuclear bomb on underwater sea life are basically unknown. And instead of the nuclear fallout landing on the ground near the explosion, as it would in an above ground explosion, here the fallout would be free to travel in the ocean currents.
The prospect of a nuke igniting the oil deposit is one of the more persuasive counterarguments. It may be a low probability, but when one of the possible side effects of an experiment is the destruction of life as we know it, that tends to make people shy away from trying it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Oh boo hoo? Given the choice between losing the well and having the well spill all of it's contents into the ocean and causing havoc on the environment in the Gulf, Florida, the Atlantic and possibly around Europe once it gets into the Gulf Stream, I think we should deprive BP of a few billion dollars.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
What happens when you hit underwater sea life with a nuke?
The same thing that happens to anything else.
what was that crass slogan again?
why don't i hear it anymore?
meant to appeal to low iq dimwits as a valid solution to the energy crisis? you know, buy us a couple more months of soccer moms in SUVs in suburban sprawl, before the inevitable? hey, what's a little ecosystem destruction when we need to go to walmart to buy plastic crap and mcdonalds to shovel more calories in our distended waistlines? why's it smell like oil near the beach mommy?
as the economy recovers, as newly rich brazilian, chinese, and indian economies begin to suck energy like the west, as the oil only gets deeper and deeper... welcome to a near future, 2015, 2020: $10 a gallon gas. except those brazilian, chinese, and indians: they are already seeking alternatives. you know like nuclear... NOT IN MY BACKYARD!
you were warned back in the 1970s. but you kept funding the saudis, who kept building wahhabi madrassas in pakistan, and you got 9/11. but you still didn't see the writing on the wall. in fact, you thought it was a good excuse to secure some iraqi oil
now you're destroying your own shorelines, and still living in denial, still a hopeless rationalizing junkie addict
when the inevitable comes, when we can no longer afford the gas guzzling lifestyle, many of you will say "who saw that coming?"
plenty of us did, jackass
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Russia has experimented with nuking underwater oil-spills and has been rather successful (they managed to close the well on 4 of 5 tries). (http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=et&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kp.ru%2Fdaily%2F24482%2F640124%2F&sl=ru&tl=en) The problem with this one is the massive oil reserve under the seabed. Should it rupture and release billions of barrels of oil that is under immense pressure, a Yellowstone scale extinction event would occur. Whatever the actual leak size is (5000 barrels according to official sources, 25000-80000 according to expert opinions based on videos or 165000+ according to original disaster plan (prior to creating the site, BP provided documentation to government showing that it would take at least 165000 barrels/day leak for the oil spill to reach the shore)) the damage it will do, unplugged for another 10 years is not comparable to accidentally releasing it all at the same time.
Any other [scientific] expert would never make such an absolutist statement,
Unless they were 'climate change' science experts, then its okay to make absolutist statements.
If you hire the lowest bidder contractor to do your dirty (or illegal) work, and they mess it up (or get caught), it's still your responsibility.
i live in midtown manhattan, i walk everywhere. i don't own a car. no bike: i hate bikes, dangerous
and i am the future. as oil prices creep up inevitably, inexorably, and permanently, the suburbs will die. we'll live like our great granfathers: dense urban centers, lots of public transportation
so you better get used to my smugness, because your children and your grandchildren will be saying exactly what i am saying, "why didn't anyone plan ahead granddad? it was so obvious it was coming. can you walk me to the train granddad?"
plan or suffer, your choice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
3. The smallest nuke that was historically deployed by the USA was the 155mm artillery shell. Conveniently already round, just like a well hole. And about 7 inches across. But I believe its officially out of the arsenal. You'll probably need a bigger hole, think goatse size gaping hole. But to kill the well with drilling mud, you only "need" like 2 inches or so diameter. So its going to take way the heck longer to drill the well to place the nuke, than to drill a simple mud-kill well. Why not shut the well down sooner by not using a nuke?
4. Before setting off the nuke, you need to backfill the hole all they way, or all you've made is a better constructed tap to leak out of. Why not shut the well down sooner by not using a nuke?
5. The best way to increase oil flow is to set off explosive charges in a well. A nuke is a heck of a big explosive. But I thought you were trying to plug the well, not make it flow more? If the nuke fails, the flow rate will be way the heck higher, but the conventional solution is risk-free.
6. Best results if you get the nuke within say 100 feet of the wellbore. Conveniently that was the best the Russians could hope for at that time with their crude (bad pun) directional drilling technology. Heck bad drilling is probably why 1 out of 6 (or whatever) tries failed. We can directional drill with pinpoint accuracy. Just two decades ago, directional drilling to hit a well and mud-kill it was interesting, but now its no big deal. Of course, the Russians couldn't intersect, so they compromised and used a big nuke instead. But we don't need the nuke, because we can intercept the bore no problemo... Why add the extra step of the nuke, after a perfectly adequate modern American directional boring job already killed the well?
7. Nuke only worked 1 in 6 times. Intercepting and mud-killing the well always works 100% of the time, very old tried and true technology. Nuke is much more risky, and the last thing this needs is increased chance of failure.
8. If the nuke fails, all hope is realistically lost of ever controlling the well. The formation will drain out before we can get in there, repair the damage from the nuke, and try to plug. Very high stakes and the casino has rigged the odds against us. A fools wager.
So the nuke is slower, more expensive, failure mode is incredibly dangerous, much less reliable... Why use a nuke again?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
i want you to listen to reason: we need to get off oil now, or we will suffer
and you react like i'm trying to run your life?
no, i'm trying to wake you up from your ignorant complacency, and you are reacting like a teenager told by his mom he needs to stop playing videogames and start studying. that indolent sloth of a teenager would then say 'Look on the bright side. Now you have an outlet for all your self-righteous indignation. Nothing feels quite as good to someone trying to run other people's lives as saying "I told you so!"'
so you are basically saying that american energy policy is akin to a fat lazy useless teenager with a sense of spoiled entitlement... but i'm in the wrong because i'm pointing out the simple obvious truth that we're on the wrong path? is that your message to me?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Goodluckwiththat.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
they were building dense cities 4,000 years ago on the nile
whatever $ is lost for moving food into the city is gained and then some by everyone not needing to drive 2 hours and sit in gridlock every day just to do their business
dense cities are the norm for humanity. dense cities make sense even when all you have is sailing ships and mules. when oil goes to $15 a gallon, the cities will contract in size and normalcy will return after 50 years of cheap oil fueled insanity
meanwhile, suburban sprawl is an artificial endangered idiocy
if that "smugness" bothers you, why doesn't the traditional tea party/ republican low iq smugness and complacency about there being no problem in energy bother you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wow, so many ways your hate blinds you. But let's look at a factual one. Suppose, for a moment, that you've got a few robots working a mile undersea. Imagine these have umbilical cords a mile long. Imagine that these umbilical cords are connected to corks bobbing on top of the water. Imagine, now, that, while you're loosing a several million dollars a day, someone else wants to bring their own robot in and drive all around your work site. How well is that going to work? By the way, they're not there to help you. They're coming to hurt you, and won't give you any information you don't already have.
is this
a) a good idea, because you hate BP
b) a good idea, because you want to keep spilling oil
c) a good idea, because political grandstanding is good
d) a bad idea, since it gets in the way
How quaint. The deadly disaster has suddenly been spun into a summer employment opportunity for Archie and his chums. Oh wait. They don't know how to scuba dive, so their tar collection will be limited to walking along the shore. Tar down in the coral and elsewhere along the ocean floor will go uncollected.
Oh, and since this imaginative $10/lb. bounty program only rewards participants based on tar collected, the incentive is to go after the low-hanging fruit of big globs and ignore the smaller pieces. Instead of a thorough cleaning of the beaches, the program will result in a half-assed combing. No, to pay people to clean beaches of tar, you need to train them, supervise them, and pay them hourly. Volunteers work well, too.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
And if BP doesn't, the Chinese or Russians will. This area is in international waters. The Chinese are already drilling off the coast of Florida.
The question becomes: In which case is the rich gulf fishery more fucked? If it's killed off by a massive and ongoing petrochemical spill, or if the sea life is rendered inedible for decades by radioactivity?
Why would it be decades? Are we going to encase the nuke in Cobalt 60? or wrap it in iodine?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
While it's true that this is flamebait, unfortunately so is the behavior of BP and other petro companies.
We cannot just say "oh that's distasteful" and turn our heads. Sometimes burying our heads in the sand does not buy us safety or security. Sometimes it leads to the collapse of whole banking institutions or small Mediterranean nations.
So while you may not agree with his view, or while you may consider it flamebait, consider that the truth is not always pleasant.
How will you help make the world a better place today?
2^3 * 31 * 647
...the incentive is to go after the low-hanging fruit of big globs and ignore the smaller pieces.
Speak for yourself. The real challenge lies in manufacturing your own tar balls that can pass as the real thing, and yet manufacture them in such mass quantities that you can recoup your expenses and then some (of course, when I am speaking of expenses, I'm not counting the cost of ruining your mom's kitchen, her pots and bathtub, nor am I including the cost of retarring your neighbors roof and driveway. They have jobs. You don't. They can certainly afford to subsidize your entrepreneurial spirit).
Accenture (aka Andersen Consulting) is an IT consultancy. You're confusing it with Arthur Andersen, the financial consultancy that was involved with Enron. AC was forced to rebrand because Aurthur Andersen didn't like the similarity.