[kingu]

What on earth could be wrong with opening the gates to every oil producer, major engineering firm, (Flour, etc.), every major engineering school on the planet and saying, "We want help and solutions, what have you got?"

Well, if you want to gather the world's experts at working at a mile underwater, they're right there. As I said, virtually every deepwater submersible is presently at the Deepwater site. It would not surprise me if BP's not already contracted for another half dozen of them to be made, under the assumption that they're going to end up liable for them too.

The world's experts at undersea blowouts have already chimed in with their option: Just drop a nuke on it. Since Russia generally doesn't get hassled by Greenpeace, that is an easier solution for them. And I expect that BP's considered the nuclear option (or high explosives, etc), and was forced to dismiss it as an option. I suspect the reason for that is a great concern that all that would happen is rather than having a 20 inch hole to contend with, they'd end up with a vast area of the sea floor spewing oil. And who knows what else; tropical areas are suspected to have huge substrate deposits of frozen methane, what would happen if you actually did use a nuke on the floor of the gulf of Mexico is probably something that keeps someone awake at night.

As for engineering firms and schools - BP long ago opened the call to anyone who has a bloody good idea. They've also pretty much admitted the budget for this operation is upwards of five billion dollars. There's one big problem. This isn't something where you can cook the data like global warming, you actually have to come up with a real world solution, and there is just one effective one: Drill a relief well.

[Talisker]

The world's experts at undersea blowouts have already chimed in with their option: Just drop a nuke on it. Since Russia generally doesn't get hassled by Greenpeace, that is an easier solution for them. And I expect that BP's considered the nuclear option (or high explosives, etc), and was forced to dismiss it as an option. I suspect the reason for that is a great concern that all that would happen is rather than having a 20 inch hole to contend with, they'd end up with a vast area of the sea floor spewing oil. And who knows what else; tropical areas are suspected to have huge substrate deposits of frozen methane, what would happen if you actually did use a nuke on the floor of the gulf of Mexico is probably something that keeps someone awake at night.

Greenpeace? ::snort:: Greenpeace is irrelevent - you hear them demanding to be part of the solution now? As well, what would Greenpeace say when the nuke stopped the leak?

And by the way, no one is talking about "dropping a nuke on it" or "using a nuke on the floor of the Gulf" - where do you get such tripe? The nuke would be placed into the bottom of an extremely deep shaft - like three MILES underneath the ocean floor - that was angled to approach the main leaking shaft, and then crush it sideways witht he blast impact to shut it off. No radiation whatsoever would make it to the surface.

Learn before you pontificate.