The oil is coming your way.
- Thread starter EAN
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
mike_s
Contributor
sontek
Contributor
There is some prior proof that it does work, the russians have closed up similar oil leaks with Nuclear blasts 5 times... I posted the link in a previous forum post about the leak.. I'll find it again in the morning.
scubadog1969
Guest
This is hurricane time what happens if one comes ? Have they thought about that ? Looks like i will be doing alot of spring diving and travail to other dive spots this summer to other states
sontek
Contributor
This is hurricane time what happens if one comes ? Have they thought about that ? Looks like i will be doing alot of spring diving and travail to other dive spots this summer to other states
THEN WE HAVE A FIRECANE! AHHHHHHHH!
Hopefully a hurricane picks up all the oil and throws it on us so the turtles and dolphins will be ok :}
I agree that using a tactical nuke or a "large" amount of explosive set in a parallel drill hole approximately 300 yards to 1/4 mile might collapse the casing run and pinch the well off. The problem with using conventional explosive is the amount needed to put into the parallel hole is more than would fit for lack of a better term. The nuke however is sufficiently compact to be placed down a parallel borehole.
N
N
mike_s
Contributor
This is hurricane time what happens if one comes ? Have they thought about that ? Looks like i will be doing alot of spring diving and travail to other dive spots this summer to other states
well the hurricane will actually disperse the spill.
question is... does it disperse it "out to sea" or "up on the shore" ?
seeing how most hurricanes "make landfall", you're betting it's going to cover the coast in oil.
trigfunctions
Contributor
not really the same circumstances:
Enough lollygagging: Nuke the Gulf oil spill! - How the World Works - Salon.com
This much we do know: In four separate instances dating back to 1966, the Soviet Union successfully used nuclear explosives to shut off runaway onshore gas wells. According to a report published by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000, "The Soviet Program for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions," the first successful application of the nuclear option took place in the Urtabulak gas field in Southern Uzbekistan. The Urtabulak well had been gushing more than 12 million cubic meters of gas per day for almost three years and had defied numerous techno-fixes.
The first cautionary note would be to observe that there's a big difference between a gas well on land and a deep-water oil well. The primary reason why the Deepwater Horizon spill has proven so difficult to stop is precisely because the wellhead is 5,000 feet underwater, and the well bore penetrates another 13,000 feet below the seabed. Solutions that are possible on land or in shallow water are not readily applicable, or the well would already be plugged.
It's also worth noting that in the Soviet case, additional "slant wells" had to be drilled in order to get the nuclear explosive deep enough and close enough to the original well to be able to seal it off. Although some armchair nuclear option quarterbacks have recommended exploding a nuclear device at the seabed in the hope of fusing the surrounding seafloor into a giant cap, it's not clear that such a cap would be able to withstand the immense pressure exerted by the oil and gas bubbling from below. To properly place any explosive -- conventional or nuclear -- deep enough to be able to permanently plug the well would require drilling a new well -- a process that we already know is time-consuming.
This is just speculation, but I'm also guessing that we don't have a whole lot of data about what happens to the geology of a deepwater oil reservoir when a nuclear bomb is detonated in the general vicinity. I'd hate to be the president who authorized a nuclear strike against an oil well and discover that the blast created numerous fractures in the seafloor that allowed even more oil and gas to escape. It seems to me that one might want to hold such a tactic in reserve as a last resort.
And then there are the worst-case scenarios -- such as the possibility that a nuclear explosion might ignite a chain reaction of methane hydrate eruptions that could result in the most horrific global catastrophe since the Permian extinction:
You think the good citizens of Louisiana are upset now. Imagine how they'd feel after a tsunami followed by clouds of deadly methane gas laid waste to the Gulf?
Yes, and that is apparent after Katrina.
Not to be political but I have foreign customers occasionally. They routinely ask me where are all the people. At first this was perplexing to me until one fellow explained it to me, he was accustomed to see people walking, kids playing in the streets, people out on foot or bicycle getting to the market or to work. One fellow I had just recently from India, educated, well paid, never owned a car in his life, bicycles to work or walks.
Yes, there is a solution, park the cars, live in closer, give up the Hummer Homes and Mac Mansions, live a more frugal lifestyle, get a bicycle. But, in any case, none of that deals with the here and now, what could become a killer event for the Gulf of Mexico and it may well effect the Keys before all is done if this thing is not shut down soon.
It is all very sad and avoidable. And, the oil is going to start washing in, killing everything it touches.
N
Similar threads
