nuking the leak

[gfish]

There has been a lot of talking about using nukes to seal the BP oil leak, including claims that the Soviets did this several times. But all this chatter seems to come from a single article in Komsomoloskaya Pravda on May 3. The only earlier reference I can find is this youtube which seems to show the Urta-Bulak incident on September 30, 1966 mentioned in the the KP article.

Does anybody have any real facts about this? Or would like to work on a translation of the video, at least?

(Right now I'm assuming there are good reasons not to try this in the Gulf. Note that the bomb in this case is lowered into a newly-drilled well. That would take months, same as the relief wells they've been talking about. Also, who knows what the geology is like down there. As bad as this has been, I don't see why it couldn't get a lot worse if you blew the entire lid off this deposit. We'll see in the next week or two. We're very quickly approaching the point where the political calculus of Obama sending in the military to fix the world's greatest environmental threat -- WITH A HUGE EXPLOSION AMERICA FUCK YEAH \m/ -- is just going to be too powerful to ignore if it had any chance of working. Seriously, with something like that they could sweep the midterms, then sell the movie rights to Jerry Bruckheimer and solve the national debt.)

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I thought the whole point of setting off an explosion at a well was to extinguish the fire. No fire in the current spill, so I think you've got the analysis about right.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

That's the standard use of explosives, yeah. The idea here is supposed to be to squish the well shaft itself shut by shifting the earth around.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

Also, who knows what the geology is like down there

Technically, BP.

I'd guess that the uncertainty in our ability to predict the effects of an explosion is less a result of poorly characterized geology, and more about the limits of our computational models.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

That would totally kick ass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6riY-103vbc).

[nojay.livejournal.com]

From a couple of reports I understand the drillhole extends down about eighteen thousand feet (ca. 5.5km) from the seabed. I don't know how far down into the reservoir rock that goes but it probably wasn't that far given this was exploratory rather than a production bore. That means there's probably at least ten thousand feet of overburden to work with if a nuke shot is authorised.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

i heard about this in an article about a week ago. a retired US general said they could nuke the hole and fix the leak, but BP hates the idea because it means they lose the whole well and would have to re-drill. that's what i heard.

[feylike.livejournal.com]

um. how permeable is that section of seafloor after you nuke it? taking into account the pressure of the reservoir... (show your work ;-)