Nuking the Well: A Gulf-Saver?
(h/t Raw Story)
Matt Simmons thinks so.
Simmons said the US government should immediately take the effort to plug the leak out of the hands of BP and put the military in charge.
"Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil," he said.
His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.
No, see..."probably" isn't going to cut it for me.
That video is a pretty decent overview of how the Russians have tackled blown wells with nuclear devices, but it doesn't really look at the ecological price attached to detonating a nuclear device in an ecologically sensitive area, or how to contain the toxic waste generated by such an explosion.
David Neiwert wrote about this awhile ago, and some of the comments really sent chills down my spine.
Its possible that the device would create the requisite cavity which would then chimney (thus sealing the cavity). BUT - you are detonating below sea level - water will flash to steam within a few milliseconds after detonation. If you want to see what happens when water flashes at 0 time plus a millsecond or two, google on Baneberry (a sub-surface test that went December of 1969) and look at that vent cloud. You are talking about superheated and very radio-active steam. That steam will find any fissure. The gamma, and beta shot into the ocean would be pretty awful...(read the rest)
I Googled the term Baneberry and found this photo at the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (EPA):
That plume is the "vent". That vent is radioactive steam. Mmmmhmmm.
What are the chances it would stop the leak(s)?
According to Simmons, there's another plume in the same field that's even bigger and stronger than the original leak. He argues that a nuclear device would close them both off. Probably. Maybe.
Did I mention that Simmons isn't a nuclear engineer? He's a private investor in energy ventures. Bottom line for me? I see no reason to place any confidence in what someone who may have a clear conflict of interest suggests as a solution.
How it works
This Christian Science Monitor article has some details:
Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells. They believed that the force from a nuclear explosion could squeeze shut any hole within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters), depending on the explosion's power. That required drilling holes to place the nuclear device close to the target wells.
Several articles around the web reason it out as the lesser of two evils in cases where all other efforts have failed. Indeed, the scientist in the video says there are two options: nuclear and drilling a second well. Drilling a second well would take months, as we already know.
In nukes we trust?
There's a lot of information people would have to accept on trust, especially people like me who have visions of nuclear fallout and mutated sea monsters as the result of something like this. For instance, MNN.com's Shea Gunther says:
I wonder, have they considered blasting it with a nuke? The Russians first did it in 1966, four more followed in 1979 with only one failing to stop the leak. A nuke would collapse the hole carrying the oil in the Gulf and would neatly seal things up. At that water depth any radiation would be contained. I'm sure the U.S. government could rustle something up quick in their stockpile, and we could have this sucker tied up by the weekend.
My problem: I can't find any written empirical evidence that the fallout would be contained at that water depth. In fact, it appears to me from the comments on Dave's post that there's a very real risk of toasting everything within a couple of miles and shooting radioactive steam into the atmosphere for good measure.
What about regular conventional explosives?
As I understand it, the goal with any explosive device is to cause the hole to collapse on itself. According to some experts, the problem with conventional explosives is the same problem other solutions are bumping against: this well is so deep and subject to such severe pressure that there's no empirical evidence available to support or refute the claim conventional explosives would succeed. If they didn't succeed, the problem might be made even worse.
This is an incredibly frustrating problem, not only because of the draconian measures needed to stop the spillage, but because we're being asked to take so much on faith when it comes to the steps needed to stop the leak and clear the oil.
- We're told dispersants are non-toxic but hazmat suits are needed and the manufacturer's own instructions recommend they not come in contact with bare skin.
- We haven't been told what kind of impact dropping all that mud has, particularly when mixed with oil.
- We have no idea how long it will take the microbial agents to eat the oil and clear the water.
- We have absolutely no clue as to whether a nuclear device will work and if it does, whether it will do so at the expense of all living things for years to come.
- Worst of all, no one has any faith in the information we're receiving from BP, because they have not been forthright with us and appear to be acting in their best interests rather than our own.
I wasn't a rocket scientist in school, but common sense tells me the nuclear option may not be the best one.
And then, there's this map from NOAA which tells us that the breach in the pipeline is adjacent to a munitions dump.
Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. Someone once gave me that advice. Too bad Halliburton, BP, Transocean and the MMS ignored it.
Alright...scud the schools
Of fishes...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
the russians have done this 5 times.
it works.
this should have been done a month ago.
it should cost everyone involved their last 4 profitable quarters.
do it now.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Deepwater%20r...
Just becasue they have done it doesn't mean it is safe.
Matt Simmons
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Trusting the word of an investment banker? The world must be ending.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Just reporting what he said. It should be noted this is a higher number than anyone else has given, to my knowledge.
If true, the world is ending sooner rather than later.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
If true, the world is ending sooner rather than later.
Good. I hate long waits.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Personally I wouldn't give an credence to this clown on any issue.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Here.
It's been updated - an earlier version had the minimum set at the 210,000 gallon/5,000 barrel figure BP was handing out at the start, now it's the 504,000 gallon figure cited by the USGS.
Richard Heinberg here
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
The US, and the Gulf Coast especially, is so addicted to oil it's citizens will drink the sludge straight from the gulf before they finally enter rehab.
That's the future.
We are entering hurricane season. Detonate a NW in even a calm environment this close to the southern US and then wait to see if the prevailing winds deliver poisonous radio activity across the U.S. Frankly, trusting the military not to poison the population is not a gamble I want to take. To those of us that have been around for awhile, agent orange, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, cipro overdoses are all to familiar in our memories.
Is still uninhabitable. Granted, they set of numerous weapons there.
But the whole idea of blasting this shut with a NW is nuts.
What if it opens an even larger hole? That would be just wonderful.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
isn't there anymore. The Mike shot turned it into a crater.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
That they tried to let the indigenous peoples return there in the 90's. Only to find the cancer rates soar. So, they sent them to another surrounding island further away.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
I stand corrected. It was Enewetak Atoll that was vaporized by the Mike shot.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Is still lingering there. It's in the sand. It's in the trees and plants. It's in the fish. It's in everything.
Bikini Atoll will never be able to be inhabited again.
Makes me wonder about parts of New Mexico and Arizona.
And, the nooks nowadays are a lot more powerful than the ones from that time period. You're right. This is madness.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
Trinity. They have a guided tour that is open to the public for limited times. The radioactivity is quite low now. It only took a few decades to become bearable for short exposure but then it wasn't a thermonuclear explosion so there was no fast neutron reaction in the tamper and it produced only a tiny fraction of the fallout that thermonuclear weapons do. That atoll will be toxic forever.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
... when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and people gasped, "We didn't know it would do so much damage!"
Oppenheimer's response was, "They should have thought of that the day after Trinity."
Yet, here we are, looking at a new top-of-the-charts in oil spill/ecological damage, and we're still hearing, 'we didn't know!'
You're talking about a fusion bomb with megatons of explosive power. In this case, they would use a small fission bomb rated at a few kilotons. It would also be set off deep in the soil below a mile of water. While there's still some small degree of risk involved, bombing the site is probably the only alternative to a relief well at this point, and would you rather watch millions - perhaps billions - more gallons of oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico?
... it didn't have the combined cachet of 'last-ditch, desperate attempt' and 'we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here'.
Everything BP has tried has been a spectactular failure. Not the dome, not the top kill, not the junk shot. Now they're suggesting sawing off part of the pipe to put a new valve on it? And the only alternative is this guy saying nuke it?
and NO!
Bikini is occupied by both construction workers and DOE staff. The Bikini Islanders have their own government (in exile throughout the Marshall Islands). Until they lost their regular air service, the Government of Bikini had a tourism operation set up that made it possible to visit and dive the atomic fleet. If you have a self contained yacht, you can still make arraignments to dive the fleet with a government representative.
Been there, done that, got the scar.
The general population of Bikini will more then likely never be able to return to the atoll to live. The meager reparations made do not begin to cover much remediation of the damage done by Operation Crossroads.
Bikini Atoll
Added: "The Gadget" set off at the Trinity site didn't crack the earth open or ignite the atmosphere either. They also frown on collecting Trinitite on the tours (if you can find any left).
"Shortly after the announcement that the islands were safe, a group of the native people left their makeshift home to return to Bikini. Upon arriving at the island, the natives found rusting equipment, concrete, and unused naval machinery instead of palm trees and coral reefs. Nonetheless, a few determined men and women set about rebuilding the islands. They successfully cleared away tons of leftover eyesores and began life anew, but were evacuated ten years later after developing radiation poisoning from Cesium-137, (some sources also state Strontium-90), a remnant of the radioactive fallout. As of 2009, the islands remain uninhabitable, and many of the displaced natives now reside in the Carolines and Marshall Islands in the Western Pacific; also some live in California, and in Nevada".
sorry. but it's just not so.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
"The general population of Bikini will more then likely never be able to return to the atoll to live. The meager reparations made do not begin to cover much remediation of the damage done by Operation Crossroads."
"Bikini is occupied by both construction workers and DOE staff."
So I should delete the photo's and rip the page out of my passport and logs? Spent two weeks on the Atoll and didn't show any reading on my dosimeter badge (yes, I took my own).
Good luck with that.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
and Cesium-137 have half lives in the range of 30 yrs. The primary vector for both is ingestion. So essentially, we have passed two half lives.
It appears that we may have both been in error that Bikini will never be inhabitable by the general islander population for radiological reasons (economics/ sociological dispersion are different questions).
The folks at DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Labs and The American Association for the Advancement of Science seem to feel that with some relatively minor mediation actions, Bikini and the Marshall's affected by Crossroads are habitable now.
eurekalert article here:
"LLNL-Through Laboratory soil cleanup methods, residents of Bikini, Enjebi and Rongelap Islands - where nuclear tests were conducted on the atolls and in the ocean surrounding them in the 1950s - could have lower radioactive levels than the average background dose for residents in the United States and Europe."
That research done by LLNL is why DOE has folks living on Bikini. I'm going to have to stick with the science and personal experience on this one.
I think we can agree that Nuking this well is one of the more asinine suggestions put forth in a while though.
Here's my idea of poisonous radio activity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbvtb9eU4ek
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
have radio shows! that's enough pollution for me.
Some stuff you can't make up!
start drilling again?
"and Adam and Eve...as they left the garden expelled with their apple....
lobbed a grenade back over the gate...."
Let's see, the garden is the Gulf Coast, the snake is BP, the apple is oil, Adam and Eve are the people of the Gulf Coast, and God is...? Hmmmm, maybe everyone who ever warned us this could happen.
http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4be86...
Wow , that does not look good does it ? What the hell are we doing ?
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Watching the Oil Bubble burst. Followed of course by horrific losses which are transferred onto the shoulder of bubble victims while ill-gotten gains are retained by the bubble creators.
A low yield nuclear warhead is just a drop in the bucket compared to the devastation BP/Haliburton/TransOcean have already wrought.
Why a nuke ? We've huge powerful bunker buster bombs that shake entire mountain tops . Could they lower one down to the well head , even if they had to put it in some kind of containment "box " due to the pressure at that depth , and set it off ? It's bad enough already but if this thing keeps flowing until mid August / September ...
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
But first we should look at where these detonations took place; you might just be swapping one ecological disaster for another. Also would like to ask all those reichwingers who have been stating the gov't should have been more involved and taken over the operations from BP and all that shit. If the gov't would have stepped in and taken over the same reichwingers would be screaming socialism and dictatorship for having usurped the rights of a private company.
I agree the gov't could be doing more but it is BP and their associates problem to solve. Obama should at least be taking a page from the Puke Playbook and be making all sorts of noise, while doing little. If the gov't was to use the nuke and it went wrong these same a-holes would be looking for impeachment or some such thing. The gov't should be arresting any and all private corporation execs responsible for the disaster, that is their job.
"Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil," he said.
Hopefully?
uhhh, not good enough.
Ok, we know that this well is 5000ft down. And we know that it is under a lot of pressure by the way it's gushing out oil.
So, this guy says go down an additional 13000 feet and detonate a NW?
Ummm, how does he propose getting that deep? For some reason, a relief well sounds better to me. Not to mention any seismic activity that may occur from the blast of a nook that far down. Then there's all that pressure. It's gotta go somewhere.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
how he proposes putting a nuke down the well? Pump it through the choke valves?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Maybe he knows of some nifty super-secret submarine that has torpedo tubes that aim down or rotate or something.
What with all the oil in the oceans
And global warming
And nuking the ocean
Soon it's going to smell like
A fish fry around here...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I understand that they won't be using dispersant on oil that approaches the beaches. Instead they'll be spraying it with SPF 50 so tourists won't even need to being their own suntan lotion.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
always consult an investment banker. Lord help us.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
If we put our best and brightest to work we could extinguish all life on this planet much faster than they are now.
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
This is what madness sounds like.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-uyWAe0NhQ
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Thats what im talkin about!!
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
"We didn't fail. It simply didn't work."
That is the sound of a madman.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
"Do or do not. There is no try."
Hasa Diga Eebowai
taking a suggestion from the russians, whom we've threatened early and often, is akin to taking a suggestion from someone whom you've slapped repeatedly for 70 years. the one time you need to slap yourself they suggest you put on a chainmail glove, so you can tear your own face off. they want us to turn the gulf into a dead and completely unusable area. and I'm reading too many idiots here who believe that a bomb, which would guarantee the spread of oil and fallout over the eastern north american continent, is a good idea.
you just as fucking stupid as the russians hope you are. after all, afghanistan is a good war, right? it bankrupted the russians and it's doing the same to us.
for the record, the US intel would know if the russians blew up five oil wells with nukes because we'd be bragging about their failures. now we suddenly have info that that is what they've done? give me a goddamned break.
Some stuff you can't make up!
>>Hopefully? Not good enough<<
Well, given that there are no guarantees about anything, what we need to decide/know the following:
1) What level of confidence (to seal the well) would we accept? (All other things equal, would we accept the use of the nuke if we were 70% sure it would work? 80%? 90%? What is our level of acceptance?)
2) What is the actual confidence level of success for the nuke?
3) What is the environmental impact (a range of probabilities) of the nuke
4) How does that impact compare to using non-nuclear methods
Until that, this is just noise.
Nationalize BP
The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn't they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual?
The Russians did it 4 times it worked 3 times. The fourth time they didn't set the charge deep enough. The test Niewert shows was a much larger device but hey when it comes to weapons he likes to exaggerate. It seems to be the best shot at stopping the leak. Drilling a relief well will take months and then this hole will still leak until the water pressure is greater than the oil pressure, that could be a long time. Nuke it, the gulf is already a toxic waste dump from this spill, a small nuke isn't going to make it any worse.
1. What is the problem?
2. How well does the proposed solution address the problem?
3. What are the drawbacks to the above?
4. Given all of the above, is the solution worth the cost/effort?
It sounds to me like Simmons is advocating comic-book physics - intense application of amazing force always melts/fuses the target.
and this guy was supposedly an adviser to Bush.
And you know this how?
I haven't seen the pro nuke folks address what would happen to the two relief wells close by. Would they be damaged or require starting relief well drilling all over again if the "small nuke" didn't work? We have already seen how well 60-70% success estimates work out. So what are the odds of a nuke working?
The oil will be gone. That's what nuking the well does - it destroys the oil. No oil - no leak.
Sure, they've used the technique in Russia half a dozen times, but in remote areas and not with 100% success. The one they set off in Turkmenistan 40 YEARS AGO is still burning today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjoga1yrn0
And then there's the inconvenient fact that there are over 3,700 other oil drilling platforms off the gulf coast. I wonder what the Richter Scale equivalent would be of setting off a nuke in the midst of thousands of oil and gas extraction platforms? What are the chances that the underwater shock wave would rupture their risers? Would you like to gamble on that not happening? Nah, me neither.
What would this do to the surrounding oil rigs out there? There's only around 4000 of them.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
Somebody, please tell me that I'm reading some satire from The Onion.
This just gets crazier and crazier.
Yeah, let's nuke the gulf and explode a hundred gazillion tons of crude oil at once. The tsunami would roll all the way up to Chicago.
... far enough inland to collapse the dome beneath Yellowstone?
That Oklahoma would have beach front property?
What is your conceptual, continuity?
How much radioactive oil and gas do you want? It's been done by the USA as well. (Ha! bad pun)
The relief well will be completed by August 14?
Riiiight...they're gonna drill through hurricane season.
They're fucked. They knew none of this shit was gonna work.
I don't like this idea, but the fact is that we now simply have only a Hobson's choice left.
End this now. Nuke it.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
We're fucked!
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Radio active oil to boot! lets have glow in the dark pelicans!
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
.
I was being optomistic
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
You need glasses then...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
And how would they go about precisely delivering this nuclear weapon, and what if it makes the problem 10 times worse. This is a fricken nightmare! This disaster was both foreseeable AND preventable. Obviously, that's water over the dam now, but for God's sake, you want to put this responsibility on the military? Do we really think they're capable of working miracles?
The army corp of engineers know how to build a dike! What could go wrong?
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
The Army corps repaired the dike. They didn't build them. Private contractors did, and they drew up the regs on the standards.
Private contractors are also building the new dikes. We live in a free market. We give public money for private companies to piss away.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Plans had to be reviewed by AC of E.
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
Anybody remember the levees in New Orleans? Do you really think the AC of E is all that? Hah!
The cumulative damage done by the well by August will still not equal the long term damage we experience by exploding a nuclear weapon so close to our shores. One mile down is by no means deep enough for living things to escape the dangers of fallout, radiation, or the tsunami that such a weapon could generate, which would wipe out ALL of the coastline in the gulf. Definitely NOT the least of the evils here.
... the Robust Near-Earth Penetrator (i.e. Bunker-Busting Bomb) was developed in part based upon flexible drill-bit technology by Halliburton, and that - despite Congress withholding funding and/or specifically barring further development of the weapon - the Pentagon (under SecDef Donald Rumsfeld) continued to work on it.
I don't know a hell of a lot about explosives, perhaps our oil company friends can enlighten us, but what about several non nuclear bunker busters?
The way I understand it, you set the charges around the leak and create a shock wave or series of shock waves to crush the pipes and seal the leak.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
My initial reaction when I first heard this proposal was disdain but then the use of explosive lenses to hyper compress fissile materials is how nuclear weapons work. This might actually be possible if one first filled the casing with metallic shot but it would have one chance and one chance only to succeed and might make the problem a whole lot worse if it fails.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Yes, I understand that.
You could wind up with a whole mess of small leaks.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
truly gigantic one.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
There are no fool proof options here.
That's why you force companies to spend money up front for multiple safety systems.
We all know where this is going.
The investigation of this accident will reveal that there was no company malfeasance, and they'll blame the dead guys for being fuck ups.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
... that the bulk of the evidence is on the ocean floor and that it's being suggested we lob a nuke at it.
Especially since they'll have to drill a damned hole deeper to put this nutball idea into place.
It appears to me that these clowns are in full blown panic mode. For more than one reason.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
It's been 'full panic' since day one.
After the blowout preventer failed, it was game over. BP is just running experiments out there.
Other than the relief well (and the 'Blame Obama' shtick), there is NO SOLUTION.
We're all complaining about BP not having a plan for the worst case scenario in case of a drilling failure.
Seems like the same lack of thought has gone into this one.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
After 9/11 there was a whole culture of people who suddenly believed they were experts controlled demolitions, airplane crashes, etc. The same seems true now. Everyone has a silver bullet idea and each one seems more hair brained than the next.
I can understand though. This disaster is just mind boggling. Hind sight is always 20-20 but it just seems insane from what we know now that we let them drill these wells without requiring a relief well to always be drilled at the same time the way the Canadians do. If there is any deep water drilling in the future it seems to me that at a minimum we need to require that all future wells, and actually all existing wells get a relief well drilled with them. I imagine this might diminish some of the fervor for the oil industry as it would more or less double the cost of each well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PavD3wbH5PQ
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Could things get more desperate? And I want to add my voice to those who say as bad as the oil is detonating a nuke in the gulf sounds to me a million times worse.
Yes, as I have stated in my other posts - and I have been involved in sub-surface and tunnel shot testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) - timing and firing engineer - I have explained why this won't work, and yes, take a look at Baneberry Event - December 1969 - that was an estimated 50 barrels of water that flashed to superheated steam - it fissured through solid granite strata!!! Further, drilling to 18,000 feet is absurd. Our shot holes were between 3,000 and 5,000 feet) And as you drill (a shot emplacement hole is not going to be less than a three foot diameter hole - You need very specialized equipment to drill that diameter hole - the time to drill that would be months - AND you would be drilling a very large hole - IN THE SEA FLOOR! You could NOT keep it dry and the water WILL flash to superheated steam! Opening up more leaks.
Anyone who has been around these things, particularly at the NTS will tell you how absurd this idea is. And the folks at DOE, Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore know that this is not practical or possible in any way, in a sub-sea environment. I wish people who have not been around these devices, nor involved in testing them, would PLEASE STFU!
So if it's going to take 2 months to drill a relief well, how is it that Simmons proposes we drill an additional 18,000 feet bore for the magic nuke?
Then, how will the nuke disperse its energy? Is it wrong to believe that this would be a sphere? What is going to happen within this sphere of effect? Clearly, if we expect the explosion to collapse/fuse a nearby well, then we will be causing similar effects around it: shockwaves, seismic collapse, etc.
Yes, you are correct. At zero time, the surrounding strata is vaporized and leaves a spherical cavity. As the cavity cools it will "chimney, the material that had buried the device. However, this is sub- sea surface. So what will happen is that the surrounding water will flash to superheated steam - the steam will fissure all surrounding strata until the pressure of millions of psi is relieved. Notice I said millions of PSI. So the chances that you would have a normal cavity and chimney are vanishingly small. The shot hole MUST be perfectly dry, or it vents - in this case, the vent will fracture the strata and make more leaks. Only now you have irradiated oil - irradiated with gamma and beta particles, as well as far more longer lasting alpha particles. I hope that helps to clarify.
... the USS Hornet, and when giving the tour of the engine room, we'd always talk about how you find a leak in the high-pressure steam line: with a broomstick held six feet in front of you.
Common sense tells you creating an environment where there's an enormous quantity of superheated steam under amazing pressure ... that the steam will seek, find, and escape through the weakest point. (Not to mention, if this were to FAIL to close the breach, but simply add pressure to the equation, wouldn't this ADD to the natural pressure of the well?)
Like I said elsewhere, Simmons' solution sounds like comic-book physics.
http://www.ironmanarmory.com/Hydro_Armor.html
Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water.
And I'm the one in the "theoretically possible" camp. And that's if you assume the geological structure at the well allows it. That's an assumption. If that answer is "no" it's a halt. You'd need someone experienced in hydro fracing gas fields to say, as staged charges to seal vents are needed and there will be water and there will be gas once you start. For all I know the Geology of that area would allow multiple native vents (pre-existing in the formation) to open as well as a new one from the explosive. Or maybe not ... dunno.
But even if it is, the holes for the charges need to be drilled, and the charge of choice may not be nuke. The drilling itself may even be impossible, or no faster than relief wells. Then why bother.
You get an experienced Geo.Engy. hydrofrac specialist on TeeVee and not a nuke sub swabbie or a hedge fund guy and I'll listen. You want someone that readd stuff like this for work.
Technically I was trained as a rocket scientist (engineer) and yes I turned down a job offer on the Space Shuttle engines to get a Masters with a co-major in Chem-E. I'm not a Geo.Engr. And didn't go the Petro.Engr. or Nuclear Engr. route tho others from my school did. And I know that I don't know.
Somewhere there are some Russian engineers laughing their asses off at this media coverage.
"It's a good thing we're not doing brain surgery around here, or there'd be a bunch of dead fuckers in the fucking hall with fucking tags on their fucking toes."
(Said person was a director at another station and known for his ... um ... colorful observations.)
They were very instructive to me.
The Obama administration should've had people working on this idea from day one. If it was determined it wasn't geologically and environmentally feasible, they could've at least claimed to have considered all options. Unfortunately, Obama and his people seem to be driven solely by their concern for BP's profits, and won't even consider ideas that have been proven to work - vacuuming the oil with tankers, for example.
...and if it worked for the Russians, was it under the same constraints as this? And if it wasn't, were they close enough to the same that mathematical interpolation could estimate the probability of success? And if that calculation were correct, what impact, if any, would it have on the munitions dump due east and adjacent to the spill point? And if there were no impact on the munitions dump, would we have some sort of concrete assurance that the waste wouldn't be worse than the oil spill?
Oh, and FTR...nuclear scientists have been down in the Gulf since the 2nd week in May, so I'd say the Obama administration has been considering that as an option.
There are many reasons to reduce our dependence upon imported oil -- I don't feel the need to reiterate those here. That POV regarding petroleum can hardly be used to justify deep sea energy exploration before we have the proven technology to deal with when things go wrong. And it's indisputable that events have overtaken petroleum industry propaganda regarding just how badly things can go wrong. We certainly don't need to compound this current disaster by using "the Russian Option" to permanently cap this oil eruption 5,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico.
The Russian press along with portions of the Western MSM report that "the Russian Option" usually (USUALLY) works -- 4 out of 5 times (80%) is hardly a record of proven technology, especially considering that such issues as the release of radiation, or the depth at which these nuclear devices are used are not dealt with scientifically. Folks, this is still an experimental use of the "peaceful atom". The very last thing that the Obama administration needs is to resurrect Project Plowshare, let alone turn nuclear technology loose among multinational corporations -- that's just nuts.
[ http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-05-05/nuclear-sol... ]
[ http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/nu... ]
[ http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Wh... ]
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare ]
It is obvious that the interests that represent the USA energy sector have had their way regarding deregulation and reliance upon industry doing its own "policing". The Economic Meltdown of 2008 illustrates that, left to their own devices including self-regulation, this doesn't work for the banking and financial services markets either. This country needs a paradigm shift away from self-regulated market forces and back into a socially responsible re-regulated industrial base. Obama, are you listening ??
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
looks like - google on Sedan Crater, Nevada Test Site. I wish everyone could see what I have seen - they would be telling this asshole to go to and stay put. He is a clueless idiot. I have to get out of here, and go back downstairs, this talk in the public sector about using a device to seal a sub sea- surface leak is more than I can take.....
The 104 kiloton thermonuclear device was buried 635 feet below ground level.
The force of the detonation released seismic energy equivalent to an earthquake of 4.75 magnitude on the Richter Scale.
The blast moved 6.5 million cubic yards of earth and rock up to 290 feet in the air.
The resulting crater was 1280 feet across and 320 feet deep.
The sedan test sent a cloud of radioactivity towards Salt Lake City.
The Sedan Crater was entered into the National Register of Historic Places on April 1, 1995.
The test was one of 27 conducted under the Atomic Anergy Commission's Plowshare program.
The plowshare program was halted in the bid 1970's because of disappointing results and the inability to contain the radioactivity.
The Nevada Test Site is larger than the state of Rhode Island (1,350 square miles).
It opened in December 1950, the site's first nucleardevice test, dubbed Able, was an air-drop on January 27, 1951.
Some stuff you can't make up!
It seems obvious to me that they need to put a dome over that thing. An extremely heavy dome. Then, another extremely heavy dome. An even larger one. Possibly three of them. All of them larger and heavier than the one before it. Until the relief wells can be drilled.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
how about sinking a heavily-laden barge on top of it? I realize it could be hard to pinpoint its trajectory, but seems plausible to me.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I would put it on this one and send it on to anyone who would listen. I'm no expert on this stuff, but that certainly seems more reasonable than nuking it.
Not solutions. "NUKE IT" gets lots of eyeballs fast. As I said upthread the interviews aren't even asking the right questions of the right people. People on the boards are, here and elsewhere. FWIW, I'd bet if it is theoretically possible, the charge of choice still wouldn't be mini-nukes.
Nah, they just get someone on that is clueless but has some tangential connection to energy or nukes to say it might be possible. I am as qualified as they are to say that. To be clear .. I am not qualified btw! ;) But it isn't good entertainment if they tell you that part on TV.
Until someone produces a oil&gas drilling explosives geology expert who has intimate knowledge of the well site and multi-stage charges and vent control, we are all clueless. And I don't mean the guys boss, or boss's boss. Wake me up when someone does ... and then I'll have some questions about hydrofracing and water table quality to ask (not relative to Gulf but industry). That may be one reason to keep them off of TV. If someone like Maddow knew what to ask an expert in that, things could get brutal for the industry.
Do you think they'd stop drilling because the oil was contaminated?
And I wonder, would we get better gas mileage? sorry, gallows humor.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWiGWsauQ_8
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
IS gallows humor - I can not get my mind around the scope of this tragedy, and its depressing me very badly.........
The idea of concentric domes may not be bad.... The reason that the "can" that they put down on top of it before failed, was because of oily ice crystals plugging yup the line.......... Why can they use some sort of heat to heat the oily goo coming out, before it hits the line that would take it to the surface?
The scope of this is so immense that I think we have another Titanic on our hands......
Thank you all of you monsters who wanted deregulation of everything, and you drill baby drill mental midgets, and you heartless bag of shite Cheney - you excremental shite demon (See Kevin Smiths Dogma) - may you rot in your own boiling oil.
I say screw it. Forget the oil. Just put those domes over it. If it works. Great. No need for a relief well. But it will take multiple domes to secure it. I had thought of that idea of heating the metal to keep the oil or whatever from freezing and plugging the orifice. They need to write that idea off. Just put some domes over it and seal it.
But eventually, they'll need those relief wells. Just to regulate the pressure on the domes.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
I an open thread I linked a German Financial Time's article translation here, that was sarcastically titled "Deap-Sea Oil is Radioactive". It isn't.
They were making the case that an international agency, like the IAEA does for nukes, regulates offshore oil since this spill shows it can have the same effect as a nuke disaster if the regulatory oversight is poor.
This would make the call i the article LITERAL! Heh, we could place the well under IAEA regulation, maybe they would fix it.
/yes, more gallows humor
How about we send sarah palin to lecture the leak?
The sound of her screeching voice always makes my orifices pucker up....
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Seems to me the Feds would have to convene several meetings of scientists, military people, etc to evaluate:
1. Can we do it and how?
2. What are the odds of success?
3. What kinds of things could go wrong?
4. What are the odds of a worse case?
5. What new tech will we need to develop and build?
6. What are the political ramification?
7. Will the Russians help?
8. Will Congress approve the money?
9. How do other Gulf Coast countries feel about this?
Whoops, we are already into at least September before we could even try to nuke the leak by which time one hopes the relief well may be working.
on this - and why it WILL NOT WORK. IT CAN NOT WORK and that is the physics of it.
I read your excellent posts. My real point is that even if we wanted to try the risky, even dumb idea of using a nuke, the very necessary bureacratic process would take longer than drilling the relief wells.
The same sort ofevaluations of the likelihood of catastrophic events are what lead BP to believe this blowout was a low probability event.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
. . . for so many reasons.
A nuclear device risks destroying the relief well, which is close to the blowout. In any case, the relief well drilling would have to stop, the drill string would have to be removed, and the rig towed away. A month of drilling would have been wasted.
The Soviet blast was untaken in order to extinguish the gas flame, so crews could get access to the wellhead. Deepwater Horizon is totally different. No flame. It's a mile under the ocean.
It might not work anyway. The end result might be a huge crater filled with radioactive debris, with the pipe still spewing oil underneath the rubble. This is worse than the situation now.
But what if you used say three or four smaller charges. I mean we are talking about a defined space. It looked like in the vids I have seen that the casing was maybe a foot diameter or less. What if you used small charges maybe spaced 50 feet apart inside the oil flow. Use something like #4 reinforcing steel bars. You can get them in 40 foot bars. Weld them end to end. Use something like C4 mold it around the rebar and say keep the overall diameter under 3 inches. Weld as many bars to gether as they can support, a charge at the bottom of the bar and spaced whatever distance apart they are needed use delays lower it down near the bottom on a cable. Let an ROV or two guide the end into the flow lower it down to whatever depth they decised is required. If it won't go down on it own use the rov to help push it down and set it off!
The Russians have been dumping radio active wastes into the oceas off their Norther shores since WWII. There are heavily radioactive areas along their coast lines and they don't much care about the effects.
So we need to know a lot more about the after effects of their oilwell nuking program.
A bomb, could fracture many other wells in the area, size matters, we could create a bigger hole, no garantee it won't make things worst in this strata, or crack the ceiling of deposit.
A speculative gamble, beside, this is not the same as Russia's gambles.
“In the name of ‘Freedom of speech’ Politicians and the new Human Corporate are allowed to twist, distort, outright lie with impunity. And it will continue if there are no negative consequences.” Edited and added too, by me: Not and exactly quoted statement, but sufficient for my purpose.
Ministerbruce
Which will cause less environmental damage, the continued leak or a nuclear explosion to seal the leak? It's damage either way, so you have to settle for harm reduction.
Which carries the most risk? or... Which mitigates risk better?
I'm past the point of trusting theories. I want evidence in front of me, not what people "think" will work or work better.
I admit to having a bias about nuclear devices. I grew up in the 60s and 70s when we dove under desks every Friday during air raid drills so we could maybe live through a nuclear explosion. The Cold War buildup, the constant nagging threat of an all-out pissing contest over who could destroy more...It leaves its mark.
So for me, the idea of using nuclear technology to seal this well is about as credible as believing Superman will show up and reverse the Earth's spin to save it.
that blows the whole thing wide open. Guessing is what got us to this point in the first place.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
but Republican deregulation got us to this point.
To the ones science savvy among you, it may be a stupid questions. But how high is the oil concentrated in the plumes that are found under the water. Would they, if ignited by a nuclear device just explode? I mean a nuclear explosion is lots of energy and some of it heat, right?
One mile below the surface there is not enough oxygen to sustain a petrochemical fire, let alone an explosion.
That's a valid concern, but one that isn't remotely physically possible. The use of a low yield fission nuke properly positioned in an adjacent well below the sea bed would definitely seal this leak.
I really wish more progressives would bother getting an education in some physical science. I read some of these posts, and it is obvious there are too many people who don't have the slightest idea that there are many different kinds of nuclear explosives. There was one guy who was afraid of nuclear fall out drifting in the wind. They aren't setting off a fusion reaction at the surface of the ocean. They are talking about a small fission reaction below the seabed that is covered by nearly a mile of salt water.
This only sounds scary to people who don't know what is being proposed.
What is the oxidizer for in an explosive?
Not scared of nuclear energy, but not sure what you're talking about either. Guess I'm not a "progressive".
...for some empirical evidence -- not anecdotal -- that this step would have a reasonable chance of success without leaving a wasteland in its wake.
I have found nothing other than anecdotal evidence. If you believe there is science-based literature out there available to read, please link it here for me and I'll be happy to read it.
Hechicera and Seattle_TruthSeeker (among others) have provided some good input on the considerations from a geological perspective. For some information on the water column reaction see Operation Wigwam Test Report:
Here:
And read the operational reports from Operation Hardtack
*try to stay away from the "Holiday Inn Express" guests. /s
Does de-regulation make people stupid and lazy?
It makes them complacent. No accountability = satisfaction with less than optimal result.
Specifically Atomic Demolition Munitions. I'm 100% against the use of a nuke in the Gulf. BUT I do believe a conventional explosive charge could indeed close the well. But that isn't my area of expertise nor is it likely to be many peoples at all except Red Adair and he's dead.
Everything that's being tried will allow BP to re-open the pipe at some point. If the well is imploded with explosives, they won't be able to do that. I think if Congress or the media can produce documents or witnesses to prove this, Obama should be impeached. Actually, I think he should be impeached anyway, given that no efforts were made to try and vacuum the oil into tankers.
Had the top kill technique worked, it would have killed the well forever. No further activity. I have a 300+ page study linked up on a prior post that clearly states the finality of action like top kill and/or capping.
This is NOT about saving the well. It's about stopping the leak without killing everything within several miles three times over.
BP or the government could've immediately imploded the borehole - even with conventional explosives - and slowed down the flow of oil. I can't see why they wouldn't have tried something along those lines unless they were trying to preserve the pipeline.
...in an attempt to collapse the well they won't open it further.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
The oil reservoir is 13,000+ feet below the sea floor. Imploding the borehole a few hundred or even a few thousand feet down would in no way INCREASE the amount of oil flowing up from the reservoir.
Like I asked sassafra below, can methane- ya know, natural gas- combust without the aid of oxygen?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
no oxygen no flame, no burning. combustion is the chemical reaction of a flammable substance in the presence of oxygen producing an exothermic result...boom.
I hate splitting a conversation between two sub-threads.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
The expensive part of the drilling operation isn't drilling the hole, but installing another rig. The original rig lies a twisted wreck a mile below the surface of the ocean.
The plan at this point seems to be drilling relief wells at other points in the reserve pocket, ya know. Have you seen There Will Be Blood? Think milkshakes. The oil would then be removed via those new wells and platforms.
Nuking the well shut is crazy talk, whether BP still expects to get oil out of there or not. It's so obviously crazy that I won't even bother listing all of the reasons.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
Perhaps we should mount an eight-year-long ineffective occupation of the oil spill.
This talk of using a nuclear device to seal the leak, which I'm against using, reminds me of an old movie from the sixties - "Crack in the World", in which, I believe, an underground detonation of a nuclear device caused a series of earthquakes which triggered the world splitting in half.
Is this what we want to do to our world, and, for that matter, ourselves? I don't think so.
I mean, if there's a way that we can assure that all of the conservative assholes in the world are on a separate chunk of the former Earth, wellllll...
/snark
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
i'm laughing my fool head off...
as crazy as it might sound at first it might be time to start seriously considering the use of a low yield tactical demolition type nuclear warhead to seal the well head. these warheads may range from 1 kiloton TNT (the W79 artillery shell) to the W70 with a variable yield of 1-100 kilotons, or even the B61 with a selective yield of a low 300 tons.
sure there will be some water contamination by radioactive fission by-products, but the low yield character of the warheads and the large water volume, plus the warhead's very design limits this. the united states has previously investigated civil engineering uses for nuclear warheads under its operation plowshares program which among other things feasibility tested, widening the Panama canal, and creating an artificial harbor in Alaska.
at the very least the use of a nuclear capping device should be compared by scientific experts as to its environmental effects if used vs. the continued effects of an uncapped well head.
...what effect would a low-yield tactical thermonuclear device have on the highly pressurized natural gas that's spewing outta that hole with the oil?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
there's no oxygen down there to ignite the gas.
...without the presence of oxygen?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
actually when you burn wood it isn't the wood that burns it's the gas that's escaping from the wood and reacting with oxygen.
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