[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.

[FBD]

-Problem is; it would take as long to drill a hole for the nuke, as it would to drill the relief well.

[kingu]

The Saudi spill was bigger than this one, and supertankers can go anywhere. Functionally, regarding sucking up oil, the two spills are extremely similiar.

Saudi spill was 19,000 barrels, the Deepwater accident is spilling 5,000 - 25,000 barrels a day, depending on who you take numbers from. The Saudi accident was in a hundred feet of water, the Deepwater 500 times deeper at 5,000 feet.

Learn before you pontificate.

Sage advice.