Posted on 05/31/2010 11:05:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Closing the Gulf oil well leak with a nuke sounds like a bad action cartoon. The only problem is that it has been tried successfully before by the Soviets. And it worked Mother Jones reports as follows on the latest buzz from that 24/7 town meeting known as the internet.
Let’s start with the Russians. According to Vladimir Lagovsky of Komsomolskaya Pravda (once a Soviet communist paper), “In the USSR, a few such leaks were plugged with the help of the peaceful atom.” Five leaks, all underground, were plugged thusly, the paper says—starting with a 1966 natural gas fissure in Uzbekistan. That one was snuffed using a 30-megatonkiloton blast six kilometers deep—about one and a half times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. “The idea of the method is simple,” Lagovsky writes. “An underground explosion pushes the rock, compresses it, and actually squeezes the channel well shut.”
The supporters of the nuke strategy are not raving right wing lunatics either. Christopher Brownfield, military proponent of the strategy, supports socialized medicine in the military and opposed John MCCain in 2008. The comment string on the Mother Jones article treated the nuke idea very fairly.
The stakes are very high. A hurricane could multiply the damage of the gushing oil leak exponentially. The damage to the economy and the ecosystem could be devastating.
We are hearing that we have to expect 2 more months of possibly increased oil spill. Can we wait? Is BP protecting its investment instead of the public. A decision needs to be made on using nuclear or non nuclear explosives to close the oil leak. Things are getting worse. A 22 mile long, thick oil plume has been discovered, smothering marine life in its path, according to Yahoo News. Is BP protecting its profits instead of the public? It seems that BP is in charge of closing the leak. That sounds an awful lot like privatization. That makes Obama sound like a right wing Republican. Life sure is strange.
(VIDEO AT LINK)
Don’t think the initial explosion happened 3 miles down. It was at the surface more or less as far as I know.
That is nature and it will always find a way.
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and how long will it take?
Uh. No. Don’t do that.
The reports today say the "top kill" failed because of a ruptured disk down inside the bore. The nearby fractures of the sea floor suggest the explosion happened below the sea floor. While it is true that a gas bubble made it to the surface and caused a fire/explosion, that doesn't mean the damage was confined to that area.
Fixing the bore is only 1/3 of the problem. The other 2 seeps as as bad or worse. Using an explosive to "seal" the bore is a "bull in the china shop" approach.
Gulf Oil Spill - Nuclear Usage - WE MUST STOP THIS !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIGHNyGGwso&feature=related
http://theintelhub.com/2010/05/28/simmons-calls-for-obama-to-take-over-bp-military-to-nuke-oil-leak/
Good luck sweeping 25k sq miles of ocean surface. Costner’s method has been used before. Nothing novel about it. Saudi’s used it years ago.
Thanks for posting that video!
>> this is an idiot idea.
But it sounds so cool. /s
Thanks for the ping!
FletcherJ, Thank You! (ROTFLMAO!)
Please look up the Ixtoc 1 blowout, which happened down in the Bay of Campeche (the southern bight of the Gulf of Mexico) in 1979. If that didn't kill the Gulf, this won't, either. It will recover.
Fishermen are going to have a bad year, and the tourists might not come down unless someone sells them on an environmental holiday cleaning beaches or birds or something, but it'll be back.
As you say, though, if the moratorium on drilling is lifted, there will at least be some work offshore, on crew boats, or with the myriad service companies onshore and off that comprise the oil industry. Otherwise, that part of the economy will be at a standstill too, and the area is really going to suffer.
My sister was living in Corpus Christi in 1982.
She said there were tar balls ALL OVER the beaches at that time from that oil spill.
I think the use of dispersant is really to HIDE the real volume of this oil spill, therefore I believe this oil spill is even worse than Ixtoc was.
Yes, the gulf will probably recover, eventually, but I think this is going to hurt the gulf for YEARS.
I would LOVE to be WRONG! I PRAY DAILY that I am wrong!
JMO
a lot of the wildlife has not returned.
I read the herring population there is GONE.
You can find video after video on the internet showing folks going ashore there today and lifting rocks to show oil underneath. Dig in the sand a little under the rocks and there is PLENTY of oil, still.
They only cleaned the surface.
I am frankly appalled at the number of people who would risk the downside (a long term oil and gas leak, one which would have the entire geological reservoir to draw on, carrying radioactive materials to the seafloor, the surface and beyond, with no means to control the leak) versus waiting a couple months while BP tries to recover as much of the $350,000.00 or more a day leaking into the Gulf before it costs them even more than that to clean it up while the relief wells are being drilled--at an historically unprecedented rate, because drilling technology has advanced that far in the past couple of decades.
The amount of media fostered premature desperation coupled with the usual apocalyptic environmetal hyperbole is stunning, and the effect is even more insane than the Algore/GLobal Warming crowd was.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for polluting the environment at all. But the planet is far tougher than humans seem to think and life here has survived and flourished after far worse.
This isn't the Permian Extinction, just a blowout.
Well said. Also the rest of your post about describes everything going on.
SO, I guess they DID call the director from Armageddon to the Pres__ident’s brainstorming session???
Why do I keep getting a picture in my head of that guy with the “solar winds WILL be caught by the mylar sails”, and then Cameron saying — can we please get someone in here who’s at least won a couple Oscars like me? He’s only won a Razzie and a Saturn award! What does HE know about plugging a well!
Dr. Sueuss’ worst nightmare indeed! These people are gonna screw something up big time, and then we’ll all be out of luck!
“Like Prince William sound? Someone should tell the fisherman there.. and all the wildlife that is there now.”
Like the huge herring runs that never came back? Or the plankton blooms in the inner Sound where there once was crystal clear water? Or the decimated inner Sound coho runs? Or that you can get rich in a hot summer recovering all the oil bubbling to the surface in greater quantities than in the clean up ever got rif of?
We just haven’t gotten the word yet, maybe when they build a road into Cordova we’ll get the news...
And yes, Exxon beat the damages and we got pennies on the dollar for our losses — took them decades in court to beat us, but they won in the USSC. You imagine BP will do better (at screwing the fishermen)?
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