BloomBerg News: Small Nuclear Device Only Way To Stop Oil Spill :)

matbe

Bullfighter wrote: »

Get a grip. We would only be talking about a device with less than a few kilotons of energy output, about the same as a US 'bunker buster' bomb. This is not some multi-megaton mushroom cloud city vaporiser....

The device would be detonated thousands of feet below the seabed, the radiation will still be shielded by millions of tons of rock.

They are proposing using it instead of the equivalent in conventional explosives because of the intense heat generated by a fission reaction which means that the rock is turned into non-porous glass - sealing the leak.

Or splitting it wide open making it worse maybe? Nice.


The articles i read (ok internet speculation) said a device twice the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Not quite a bunker buster.

borntobefree

Cracks Show BP Was Battling Its Gulf Well as Early as February

LINK The incident was a “showstopper,” said Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley

borntobefree

From Obama's speech

Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That's why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.
As a result of these efforts, we've directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that's expected to stop the leak completely.

So the recommendations of the “nation’s best” is “do better?” or “do more?”

Uhhhh - that's worrying.

Bullfighter

matbe wrote: »

Or splitting it wide open making it worse maybe? Nice.


The articles i read (ok internet speculation) said a device twice the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Not quite a bunker buster.

I'm not saying it is the right answer, however it has been successfully deployed as a solution to cracked underground bore heads by the Russians on several occasions, although never at this depth.

It's the knee jerk 'NO NUKES' response from people (no disrespect) whose understanding of the subject is nil.

It won't irradiate the GOM, it won't kill wildlife... well maybe a small percentage of local deep sea life from the shockwave - but still a .00001% of those that are currently dying horrible deaths from oil & dispersant contamination

Face the facts, then act.

Lotus-eater

It does you make wonder though. We're at the limits of human technology etc, nothing like this has ever been attempted before etc, we've never been this deep etc.
So............ something goes wrong and we are now not in control of the oil lake, we don't know how to control it, everything we do at that huge depth goes wrong.

So lets try using a nuclear bomb at that huge depth, what could go wrong? Well we don't know.

System

I thought there was supposed to be an oil shortage.

Asheron

The russians have used Nuclear Devices to seal oil wells in the past.

tomterm8

Bullfighter wrote: »

I'm not saying it is the right answer, however it has been successfully deployed as a solution to cracked underground bore heads by the Russians on several occasions, although never at this depth.

It's the knee jerk 'NO NUKES' response from people (no disrespect) whose understanding of the subject is nil.

It won't irradiate the GOM, it won't kill wildlife... well maybe a small percentage of local deep sea life from the shockwave - but still a .00001% of those that are currently dying horrible deaths from oil & dispersant contamination

Face the facts, then act.

How many times has this been tried at this depth, with subsoil of the type found at this location? How many times has it been tried on an oil well, as supposed to the natural gas wells which were what the USSR tried it on? What do we do if the thing doesn't work?

I'll give you the answer to the first and second question... it has never been tried before in these circumstances.

Asheron

NO, Peak oil is not true, Oil will never run out, it replenishes itself over time.

GDB2222

Well, give it say a billion years and it really will replenish itself. I'll catch a bit of sleep in the meantime.