Right now there is one well, out of control. Imagine how much fun it would be to have a dozen high pressure seeps which have no casing, no place to attach a wellhead, and no wellbore to try to drill into with a r
Forget nukes. How about four holes drilled next to the well...go down 300 ft on each. Detonate four explosives to crimp shut, to collapse the well from four different directions. I hear conflicting reports but that's basalt down there...so I hear
During two months of BP drilling relief wells all the fish and oyster grounds in the Gulf will be destroyed. So will fish spawning grounds near shore. Those food resources are worth billions... worth a lot more than one BP well which needs to be destroyed permanently
That's only half the story. If BP did demolish the well the way I propose it would not be able to drill a new well there for a long time. BP's name is dirt right now. All drilling is stopped now anyway in the Gulf....right now at least
With the two relief wells being drilled BP keeps its foot in the door to get the oil out of this reservoir
Aren't those two relief wells the ones being drilled in the Gulf at the moment?
There are certainly conflicting reports out there, I'll give you that. Every blog pimp on the planet is out there trying to one up the next and they have escalated to nuclear options.
First, nope, not basalt. Mud/sand, unconsolidated sediment. At 300 ft. you would be trying to crimp shut surface casing, intermediate casing, and any drill string in the hole with four simultaneously detonated charges an unknown distance from the wellbore, put in holes drilled from nearly a mile away (not a mile of rock, a mile of water) in sediments with uncertain shock coupling chateristics.
Once you are drilling in rock, you can maneuver the drillstring, correct your azimuth and inclination and 'steer' the wellbore. In water it's pretty tough to guide the drill string (currents affect it), in unconsolidated sediment, it is really tough. Steering can only be effected in directional holes when you have more solid rock to steer against.
Even if you could get the four charges in place, which would be a logistical nightmare, the holes in the right places, (another logistical nightmare), the effect of the explosion would have to seal that pipe well enough that a formation with sufficient pressure to produce 1000 to 5000 barrels of fluid per day against roughly 2200 psi of hydrostatic pressure (just from the seawater out there) will not leak through some small crack--because if it does, you haven't solved the problem.
That pipe will eventually corrode, and any leak will erode the pipe around the opening, no matter how small.
You only get one chance to get it right, because it won't be possible to assess the effects if it fails.
About the guy calling for 'nuking the well' (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-16/nuke-the-oil-spill/): "Christopher Brownfield is a former nuclear submarine officer, an Iraq veteran, and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University."
--Who apparently doesn't know diddley squat about oil wells.
For more than 100 years, explosives have been used to break the necks of runaway oil wells, snapping the long, narrow columns and sealing them shut with tons and tons of rock.
...is one I'd like to see his sources on. I have not known this method to be used to seal an oil well, ever, and I'm sure I would have heard about it from some of the old timers who were around when I broke out in the patch.
If it is an effective method, it would be in use instead of the hassle of setting cement plugs through every porous zone, even in casing.
God forbid a neutron source (used in some well logging tools) is lost in the hole, because that mandates filling the entire wellbore from bottom to surface with cement, dyed to indicate the presence of radioactive material.
As for his comment The latest nonsense and false hope, a mile-long pipe designed to divert some of the oil flow, is like putting a 4-inch straw into a 22-inch-diameter fire hose. It's a sordid attempt by BP at drinking its own milkshake.
They did it. They're pulling 2000 bbl of oil out of the riser daily and flaring the gas. That isn't a profitable venture, but one which is mitigating the environmental damage done by that oil had it gone into the gulf.
Don't confuse that with a relief well, it isn't.
What I want to know is why no one has done any calculations on the effect of a nuclear shockwave in a non-compressible fluid (water) on compressible marine life. I'm no marine biologist, but in my reading I found where only 5 psi or so of overpressure will kill humans, what's the 'squish factor' for marine life? Most of us have heard of 'nobel spinners', and a nuke would really put the squeeze on the fauna down there.