First of all, if you believe the Peak Oil myth and that ALL the oil can leak out of the Gulf, I can’t help you.
But given that, I will believe the experts at The Oil Drum site, who do this work every day, rather than a FReeper on Google. They say it will not work. In fact, there is a good chance that it will make cracks and matters worse.
Hope you don’t mind.
I do not.
But given that, I will believe the experts at The Oil Drum site, who do this work every day, rather than a FReeper on Google. They say it will not work. In fact, there is a good chance that it will make cracks and matters worse.
Regarding whether or not it will work... I don't know, my only point was that the nuclear radiation created from trying would not be any more harmful than the chemicals currently being released.
I am not a FReeper on "Google".
The title of this thread reports that a leading oil executive has claimed that this blowout may NEVER be capped. I assume never means until this particular well runs dry - NOT until all of the oil in the whole wide world leaks into the gulf.
So assuming that ALL of the oil from this particular well is about to leak out into the gulf over the next decade or more unabated, attempting to stop it with a nuke does not seem to be such a crazy option.
A standard nuclear bomb releases energy as follows:Tremendous amounts of energy are released by even say a 20 KT nuke (a little bigger than the one used on Hiroshima) temperatures of several tens of million degrees celsius develop in the immediate area of the detonation. This is in marked contrast to the few thousand degrees of a conventional explosion.
50% as blast;
35% as thermal radiation; made up of a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light and some soft x-ray emitted at the time of the explosion; and
15% as nuclear radiation; including 5% as initial ionizing radiation consisting chiefly of neutrons and gamma rays emitted within the first minute after detonation, and 10% as residual nuclear radiation. Residual nuclear radiation is the hazard in fallout - this would negligible in an undersea/offshore blast.
Modern nuclear weapons can be "tuned" to produce less radiation and more heat/blast to fuse loose substrates.
Again, no guarantee it will work - but if the alternative is to stand and watch the entire well's contents spew into the gulf...