DoE Posts Raw Data From Oil Spill, Coast Guard Asks For Tech Help

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy this week opened an online portal where the public can get all the technical details it can stomach about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. The DoE site offers online access to schematics, pressure tests, diagnostic results and other data about the malfunctioning blowout preventer and other problems in the ongoing mess. This comes alongside news that the US Coast Guard has issued a call for better specialized technology to help it respond to the ever-widening spill. The Coast Guard is looking for all manner of technology, such as advanced wireless sensors to help it track the movement and amount of oil in the Gulf, or devices that could help to contain and control the underwater leak." Reader freddled points out a story at the Guardian that illustrates how the location of an oil leak is frequently the primary factor in its perceived importance.

Comments

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[sexconker]

Pick one:

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

There's a one-in-a-billion chance it could make things SLIGHTLY WORSE by making the oil come up at SEVERAL spots in the area instead of the one shitstream we hope to maybe have under better control in a few months.

If we blew it up, we couldn't reuse that well.

Rubber duckies

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubber duckies with GPS tracking built-in. Wherever the oil is going, the ducks will go too.

Re:Rubber duckies

[oldspewey]

Not unless you build special duckies that are suspended at 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, etc. all the way down to 1500m below the surface. This spill is manifesting itself in 3 dimensions.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[zill]

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

Yes the Russian successfully performed the procedure on land. This is underwater at 5000 feet.

As for the explosives, I offer you this car analogy:

After the mechanic ruptured my gas tank while performing a routine checkup, he blurted out the excuse "there's a lot of pavement out there so don't worry about it" and offered to install a nitrous system instead. Do I really want that nitrous system?

Re:Thank dog for the groaniad

[raddan]

Did you actually RTFA or are you responding to the lame editorializing? The Guardian article is quite disturbing.

Re:More exposure of Africa is good

[e2d2]

JFC, how am I offtopic _this_ time? The summary posted an article about the Niger Delta.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[Guppy]

The RUSSIANS did that sort of thing. The RUSSIANS. RUSSIANS.

I'd like to bring up that a physicist is heading up the government's working group on the spill. If the approach has technical merit, I'm sure that Dr. Chu will be able to evaluate it. You know, based on the physics of the problem, rather than repeating the word "Russians" a couple of times.

Re:Why is nobody talking about blowing it up?

[yurtinus]

Please explain your car analogy. I've put a lot of effort into analyzing it against what I know, and I clearly must be missing something.

Re:Thank dog for the groaniad

[dangitman]

This demonstrates, again, how it's really the freakishly skewed perceptions of people playing politics that drive "environmentalism" as it is currently practiced, and it doesn't have much of anything to do with the real environment.

Actually, the people who are serious about environmentalism do care when it happens in Nigeria or other "off the radar" places. They actually expend a lot of energy trying to draw people's attention to these areas.

What you are seeing has nothing to do with environmentalism, but with the mass media, which naturally reports on things that are sensational, easy, and nearby.

My suspicion is that if this were a story about environmentalists trying to expose an environmental disaster in Nigeria, you'd be lambasting them for focusing on such a trivial issue that's not relevant to you.