Nuke It? It's a little less crazy than it sounds

National Review Online ^ | June 2, 2010 | Daniel Foster

[sinanju]

It was September of 1966, and gas was gushing uncontrollably from the wells in the Bukhara province of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. But the Reds, at the height of their industrial might, had a novel solution. They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshima — to the depths beneath the wellhead. With the pull of a lever, a fistful of plutonium was introduced to itself under enormous pressure, setting off the chain reaction that starts with E = MC2 and ends in Kaboom! The ensuing blast collapsed the drill channel in on itself, sealing off the well.

The Soviets repeated the trick four times between 1966 and 1979, using payloads as large as 60 kilotons to choke hydrocarbon leaks. Now, as the Obama administration stares into the abyss of the Deepwater Horizon spill, and a slicker of sweet, medium crude blankets the Gulf of Mexico, slouching its way toward American beaches and wetlands, Russia’s newspaper of record is calling on the president to consider this literal “nuclear option.”

As well he should. It’s a little less crazy than it sounds. The simple fact is that the leak has confounded all conventional efforts to quell it, forcing British Petroleum and its federal overseers to resort to a series of untested, increasingly unwieldy, and heretofore unsuccessful backup plans as the American people’s impatience and rage grow at geometric rates. In the madness that is Deepwater Horizon, The Bomb may be the sanest choice.

[sinanju]

I had no idea that this plotline was for real. Don't think that even Obama won't be willing to do this to get his cullions out of the wringer.

[fishtank]

If Obama decides to do this, and I have no doubt it will work, he’ll demonstrate he has at least half a brain.....

.... wait a minute ....

...oops

[Uncle Miltie]

An envirnomental catastrophe is a terrible thing to waste. Let ‘er leak! We can blame the greedy Oil Companies forever, and use the spill as a pretext for Cap and Tax.

< / 0bummer Logic >

[surfer]

it’s poetic i tell u...

[OneWingedShark]

We can nuke it... or we can let it gush out...

[LouAvul]

I have reservations about putting an object hotter than the sun into the second largest oil reserve on the planet, but that’s just me.

[rednesss]

I’d like to see the nuke that we have sitting on the shelf that would work at a minimum of 5,000 feet of water, much less where it would have to go which is at least another 10,000 feet lower than that. Nuclear bombs bombs require electronic components to detonate, that don’t do so well in that environment.

[richardtavor]

We have denoted a nuke in a wellbore in Wyoming. It was called WASP, or Wyoming Atomic Stimulation Program and was an attempt to see if fractures could be induced. Unfortunately, it just melted the rock. The device was a 29 Kiloton device that was exploded in 1967.

[LiberConservative]

"I have reservations about putting an object hotter than the sun into the second largest oil reserve on the planet, but that’s just me."

It's not just you.

[UCANSEE2]

“They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshima — to the depths beneath the wellhead”

AND how long did that take? They didn’t have to deal with 5000’ feet of water, in a desert.

[WKUHilltopper]

But what about the fish and the helpless ocean worms?! They’ll get nuked! Oh, the horror!

Never mind the fact, with all that radiation, we could create the “Gulf of Mexico Godzilla”!

[mnehring]

I would want them to do it just to see the videos of the hippies wailing and gnashing teeth for mother Gaia.

[The Comedian]

Technically, it's a moderately good idea.

But may I remind everyone that *everything* Obama does is cursed by Heaven and doomed to inestimable failure?

If he's for it, whatever it is (except true rependence or suicide), I'm against it, because it's *wrong*. Always has been, always will be.

And for the record, I am stating that if a tactical nuke is used in an attempt to close the leak, it will end up destroying an insane percentage of sea life *and* killing billions of human beings through indirect side-effects.

Billions with a "B".

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[RadioCirca1970]

Bottom Line: Biden was right, its a big “fkn deal”

[atomic conspiracy]

“It’s a little less crazy than it sounds”

This means that it’s only bat-guano crazy, rather than completely drooling bug-eyed crazy.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Russia’s newspaper of record is calling on the president to consider this literal “nuclear option.”

He'll do it if other experts agree that it's a reasonable approach. But he'll look pretty pathetic doing it only *after* a Russian newspaper suggested it. Then again, all the Western oil industry experts, include BP's engineers, will look pretty pathetic too. They, of all people, should have been well aware that this approach has been tried and worked in the past. It does sound as if all the Soviet nukings were on land, not in the ocean. Maybe there's a major difference -- like a risk of creating a huge tidal wave that will devastate island and oceanfront communities, and wash a lot of the already-escaped oil further into the land.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Melting rock might be just what’s needed here, though.

[Tigen]

I DONT BELIEVE THE DEPTH IN 66 was attained.

Drill logs please... And what size were there bombs back then 3' 6' 10'across? 21 thousand FEET Nope dont think so... But I do believe that the russians want us to try IN HOPES OF FAILURE

[thackney]

The author leaves out the rather important detail of it did not always work. The Russians quite doing this decades ago for a reason.

[thackney]

Or we cann continue the relief wells.