I’ve been informed that the “Top Kill” attempt is underway, and you can watch the video at CNN. I’m watching right now, and I’m seeing dirty shit spew from about three distinct leaks at terrifying speed, and it looks far worse than it did before.
I’ve also had a number of you email me and suggest it should be nuked. I’m not so sure how good of an idea that is.
MikeJ
When are the /b/tards going to stop linking to that?
Third Eye Open
So the mud is a barium mixture. Am I the only one that thinks its funny that the GoM is getting a barium enema?
Crashman
This could lead to an Ultra Kill on the Gulf Coast ecosystem. Gibs everywhere!
scav
well, mud going in at a higher pressure to overwhelm the pressure of the gushing oil would be rather messier insofar as I understand the laws of reality.
srv
All questions answered here: http://www.theoildrum.com
licensed to kill time
I prefer seeing the brown stuff to the black oil and white methane, anyway. Have no idea if this is good or bad or how long it might take until they know if it is working. It’s weirdly hypnotic.
Morbo
Why does it have to be a nuke? It’s an extreme example of a perfectly reasonable proposal which by its radioactive nature makes the idea untenable. Explosive welding is a fairly well established process even if it’s generally not used by anyone without access to high explosives (i.e. the military). While there are obvious drawbacks to going nuclear, I haven’t seen any explanation as to why surrounding the pipe with enough C4 to level a city block then detonating it wouldn’t be a possible solution.
Va Highlander
@srv: What srv said.
Actually, things are not looking that bad, so far.
anonymoose
although it looks like it is gushing worse than before. This looks to be from a different angle and alot closer than the traditional spill-cam footage.
it my look worse now, but I have a feeling that is how much it has been gushing ever since the explosion happened.
Well, it is the only way to be sure. Doing it from orbit helps.
Quaker in a Basement
It’s like trying to plug a fire hose with chewing gum. We’re gonna need more gum.
eyepaddle
Nuking a well is a horribly bad idea. Literally terrible. THe gas well blowout that soviets nuked (which may still be burning actually) was done before directional drilling was very advanced–if the soviets had the technology at all. We can plug this well without trying an uncontrolled experiment in nuclear physics.
I am trying to see if the flow out the distant riser leak has switched over to mud, or lost the gas component, or remained unchanged. So far, I think this looks like it is worth continuing.
Alex S.
Maybe Desmond Hume can help.
jonas
It’s hard to know what you’re seeing in that ROV camera feed. All the diagrams I’ve seen depict the leak as coming from a rupture in the riser line above the BOP, but this looks like several gushers coming out of the seabed or something. Krikey.
LarsThorwald
I know how that feels, having your pipe packed tight with oil-blocking mud.
Garcon, more wings, please!
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Okay, so Aquaman is headed down with a nuclear weapon to Stop The Leak.
Citizens can relax, the Super Action Figures have it all under control.
Once again, magical thinking saves the day. I am switching my registration to Republican. My Democrat experiment is over.
That picture on tv looks a lot like the time the bouganvilla roots crushed the sewer drain pipe on the south side of the house, and the sewer guy had to put in a new cleanout. Meanwhile, waste water was backing up into the bathtub.
Yep, same exact picture.
Va Highlander
I think that is the top of the BOP, actually.
SpotWeld
Every time I read “Top Kill” I keep thinking that Richard Clarkson is somehow involved.
Maybe he can narrate the web feed.
georgia pig
@Va Highlander: From what I’ve read on TOD, that shit spewing is to be expected.
stevie314159
If you look back at one of the first threads here on the spill, you’ll see it was ME who suggested the nuke idea (like in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).
I was laughed at and ridiculed.
Of course, my next idea was to train dolphins to use welding torches.
Va Highlander
@georgia pig: Yeah, exactly. That is what I understand as well.
Tsulagi
Any proof it wouldn’t work? Didn’t think so.
We’ve spent hundreds of billions on these suckers. Seems a shame not to use one every now and then.
arguingwithsignposts
Regardless of the visuals, I think the entire BJ community hopes it works.
FormerSwingVoter
This looks like a job for Sea-Man! And his sidekick, Swallow!
eyepaddle
@georgia pig:
Yes, it has to be high enough to force the oil back down the well, so at this point it is going to be high enough to blast out the holes in the BOP.
As long as they have the mud pumps blasting away there will be plumes like that. When they figure they have enough mud in the hole and throttle back the pumps, those plumes should diminish. If they don’t, the top kill has failed and reservoir pressure is still coming out of the hole.
Sue
Why do I get the idea that Ron Howard is not planning on making a “hooray for the engineers” movie like when he made Apollo 13?
MikeJ
So does anyone actually know what we’re looking at? Nothing spewing near the ROV I’m looking at, but no idea where it it.
http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46260
Tom in NOLA
I still don’t understand why they can’t drop something huge and heavy on top of it. Me not smart like BP tho.
GambitRF
The Oil Drum definitely seems like the best place for running commentary on this, although it’s hard to cut through some of the jargon.
MikeJ
@Tom in NOLA: That’s what they’re doing.
freelancer
Send Bruce Willis, if he could do it in space, he can do it underwater!
licensed to kill time
@MikeJ: That looks like something from Alien. A few minutes ago that same feed was showing the mud spewing out.
apikoros
It’s not a good idea. It is a terrible idea. The problem is that we are long past terrible ideas. At this point our choices are between catastrophic, nuclear and apocalyptic. Now it’s a subjective judgement whether we are currently at catastrophic or apocalyptic but I think that another month (which is the MINIMUM amount of time that drilling relief wells will take) we will be far past apocalyptic as well. By then, oil should be washing up on the beaches of the east coast and if we’re very lucky, most will be caught by the Gulf Stream and channelled back to Britain.
I’d personally prefer disposing a fair percentage of our 10,000 lb. convention around the BOP and setting them off. I think we could get a few kilotons within range and that would do the job. I’d want an engineer to sign off, but one form the Dept. of the Army, NOT the Oil & Gas Inst.!
Mnemosyne
@Morbo:
IIRC, the problem is the softness of the seabed — it’s basically 10 feet (or more) of mud before you get down to the rock they drilled through. So trying to get to the part that you could actually get to collapse in on itself would be tricky.
Alex S.
@Tom in NOLA:
Like Al Gore, for example.
(sorry)
Dimmic Rat
I think the whole “nuke it” bit is a joke. What I really want to know is why Obama hasn’t used his steely eyed glare to force the leak to close itself.
Face
Because nothing says “pristine waters” like radioactive plutonium in every fish, crab, and oyster.
Va Highlander
@Mnemosyne:
More like several hundred feet of mud, I think.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Face:
It would give me back that youthful glow.
But, at what price? You see my meaning.
Tom in NOLA
HEY-O AL GORE!!!1!
But seriously, why not just drop a goddamn 30,000-ton slab of concrete on top of the pipe, followed by another big slab to make sure the pipe is completely flattened and the flow is cut off?
I know there’s a good explanation of why that wouldn’t work and I’m an idiot O-bot and maybe also ghey, but I just haven’t heard it yet.
srv
multi-angle stream
http://edition.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1
Mnemosyne
@Va Highlander:
I think you’re right — I wanted to make sure I didn’t overestimate by mistake. ;-)
@Dimmic Rat:
Don’t they need Chuck Norris for that?
schrodinger's cat
@Face: What is its half-life?
Mr Furious
I think part of the appeal of the nuclear option is that the reaction fuses/melts the bedrock—forming a seal.
OF course that assumes the bedrock doesn’t rupture somewhere else or blow open the whole fucking reserve
Emma
Say we nuke it. Find a way of dropping a nuclear bomb right into the well, making sure that it implodes not explodes (you know what I mean, making sure it all folds down, not gushes up). Now. What happens to the radiation? Because, as much as I want the oil stopped, I would prefer if the next shrimp boil I eat doesn’t give me cancer.
Also, I would think that if you’re just a bit off, you could blow a hole somewhere else near by?
roboteating
*Shrug*
Gotta nuke something.
MikeJ
@Tom in NOLA: Again, that’s what they’re doing. they pump drilling mud down the hole because it’s heavy. They’re dropping something heavy on top of it right now.
John PM
I understand that we should explore all options and that nothing should be off the table, but something about the idea of massive oil spill + nuclear radiation does not sound comforting. It seems like cauterizing an amputation with a flame thrower.
Va Highlander
@Mnemosyne: They were discussing the geology of the site at theOilDrum. I thought the idea of hundreds—600?—of feet just jaw-dropping, myself.
scav
I’m beginning to pick up some eerie resonances between this and the last thread. Dang it! Fence that Gusher!
Mr Furious
@Tom in NOLA: That was my first theory… Of course the wellhead is like five stories tall, so you’d need to drop something that would fit over that or crush it flat… And whatever you drop has to form a seal against the terrain o the sea floor.
And if the mud mentioned above is true, then the highly pressurized oil will still have a path up the original drill bore and simply force it’s way through that non-rock sea floor mud and start spewing around the edges of your gigantic Acme weight.
And if you drop something like that on it, and it doesn’t cut it off, then what? You have to seal a leak underneath a giganic slab of concrete…
NOTE: I have no idea wtf I am talking about.
Martin
Well, I’ve been watching the video on and off for the last few days and this is the first video I’ve seen of the main leak on top of the stack. All the previous video I’ve seen is of the smaller leak farther down the pipe. If it looks heavier, are you sure you aren’t comparing different leaks?
Emma
Tom, all I can think of is that a prefab piece of concrete would crack under the pressure, so they would have to pour it — essentially what they are doing now?
Dave C
I think we should take off and nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure!
QuaintIrene
Deep Horizon? Ultra Kill ?
Who the hell thinks up these names? This isn’t some goddamn movie starring Bruce Willis.
Mnemosyne
Okay, look, people, if you’re going to insist on using the quote, can you please get it straight? It’s “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
(And, of course, Ripley’s classic response to Burke’s protests that the installation is very valuable: “They can bill me for it.”)
MikeJ
@QuaintIrene: The next two if top kill fails are LMRP Cap and BOP on BOP.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Tom in NOLA:
Maybe it won’t work because the pipe is not soft like that kink resistant yard hose we got at Ace Hardware, but rather, ridgid, and will just break in a new place if you try to flatten it.
And then, you know, if it were flexible like the yard hose, the pressure behind the leak would swell it up like a giant beach ball until it burst, and then …. back to square one.
Alex S.
@Dave C:
Hold on…! This is a multi-billion dollar project after all.
Ked
…when serious people talk about using nukes on this, they’re not talking about detonating one on the sea floor.
To do it right, you need to drill alongside the existing shaft, probably hundreds of feet down, maybe thousands. Put the nuke down that hole, fill the hole (concrete is good), detonate it.
If it works, the intense heat of the blast will cave in and fuse shut the problem well. There would be effectively zero escape of radiation (and that into the ocean, a mile down, far off the coast), the fallout would all be buried, and BP or whoever just fills the well with cement and tries to forget this ever happened.
The problem is if it doesn’t work. There’s a number of different failure modes, but it basically boils down to variations on the them of not sealing the problem well. In the very worst case, maybe the oil spewing out is radioactive, but if you set things up right there’s not a lot of possibility for that and even if it is, it’s one nuke in a big Gulf.
Seriously, people, it’s just a big ass underground demolition, and I can promise you the US government knows a lot more about underground nukes than it (or BP, or anyone) does about drilling for oil in water this deep.
jwb
@QuaintIrene: “Who the hell thinks up these names? This isn’t some goddamn movie starring Bruce Willis.”
I’m sure it’s in preproduction even as we speak.
scav
@MikeJ: “BOP on BOP“?! OK, that one was dreamt up by Dr. Seuss. Red Fish, Black Fish, Hop on Bop, Pop!
Lit3Bolt
Btw, the new Gallup/USA Today Poll is out
But honestly, WHAT CAN HE DO? I’m gonna make that my new response to every single national concern/crisis/problem.
Mnemosyne
If anyone was wondering, Sec. Salazar said today that the MMS is going to be shut down entirely and its functions are going to be distributed to three new agencies.
MikeJ
@Lit3Bolt: If the military has a secret oil well plugger laying around that they aren’t using, somebody should be horsewhipped. Otherwise, BP are probably the best equipped to stop it.
Martin
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: Well, my understanding is that the pressure at the top of the stack is 8,000 psi. If it’s a 21″ diameter pipe, you need about 1,500 tons of weight to balance the pressure out. You’d get a fair bit of help from the mass of the water column, but it’s still a shitload of pressure to overcome.
Midnight Marauder
@Lit3Bolt:
Of course, you fail to cite this point the poll revealed:
Mr Furious
@MikeJ:
They do! And Rahm won’t let Obambi use it!
jwb
@scav: pre-BOP, de-BOP, re-BOP, be-BOP.
Calouste
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Actually, with the depth of your average oil well, drilling pipe relatively speaking more or less behaves like garden hose. Or as one of my college professors used to compare it with, a bunch of drinking straws put together.
Martin
@Mnemosyne:
Ooh, SNAP!
scav
@jwb: BoP BoP a-do BoP!
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Martin:
Dang. That settles it, this is not a job for Do It Yourself’ers.
Zifnab
@scav: A bob-sham-bo?
Dave Fud
Why don’t the coal miners use nukes to cave in those pesky mountains that are in the way? It seems like it would be faster and more convenient.
Michael
@apikoros:
Personally, I’d like to see the following done as an ad hoc effort by idle Gulf Coast fishermen.
1. Provide them with GPS maps to the homes of the decisionmaking deciders of BP and Transocean. Also include the homes of Rush Hudson Limbaugh, his extended family, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Fred Barnes, Chuckles Krauthammer, Dick Viguerie and a few others.
2. Give the fishermen pickup trucks, some drums of the oil/mud/seawater mixture that is fouling the mouth of the Mississippi River, and some high powered paint sprayers.
3. They can go hose down the homes and lovely landscaping of the big money decisionmakers, hopefully spraying their wives and children as they come out the door. If their vehicles tear some shit up along the way, then too bad.
4. They can bring the corporate deciders and the pundits to the Gulf. Each pundit and decider will have a brick duct taped to each foot, and will be taken by small boat to an oil soaked patch of water 100 yards offshore, to be dropped into the water. The bootstrapping, self-made deciders will then have an opportunity to make it to shore under their own steam, so to speak.
5. The pay-per-view proceeds can be then donated to Gulf fishermen.
David in NY
I love the ideas of people who have no idea what they’re talking about (nukes, slabs of concrete, etc.). Stuff works in the movies that just won’t in real life (I always liked how in Independence Day, for example, the Aliens happened to use the same kind of computer operating system we do, so the hero could hack it — ha!).
About as much sense as the teabaggers make about economics.
Anton Sirius
@QuaintIrene:
…yet.
David in NY
@Ked:
That won’t happen any sooner, and maybe a lot later, than the relief wells. Not to mention that I hope to eat a Gulf oyster again some day.
sukabi
I’m seeing dirty shit spew from about three distinct leaks at terrifying speed, and it looks far worse than it did before.
They are showing a DIFFERENT feed that shows a different leak than the one we’ve seen previously… remember they said there were at least 3 different leaks, but the previous video they showed was only from one of them.
Mnemosyne
@Lit3Bolt:
So a poll saying that three-quarters of the people surveyed blame BP for the mess is proof positive that people think it’s Obama’s fault.
I’m not sure I agree with your police work, there, Lou. Especially since Obama gets the least amount of blame of the three entities pollsters asked about.
Michael
One other addition – Paul Shanklin will be taken out in an SUV on a car ferry (I’m thinking a Navigator or an Expedition). His parody song “In a Yugo” will be playing on the CD changer as he is rolled unceremoniously off the ferry into the oil soaked shallows, his hands cuffed to the steering wheel.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@David in NY:
Not necessary.
These are by far the best oysters in America.
Trust me.
Martin
@Dave Fud: They considered that, actually.
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
Well, it would justify all of the Steve Jobs hate around here since apparently he sold OS X to the aliens so they could take us over …
:-)
scav
@Zifnab Had to look. I’d already segued to Putting on my Top Hat. We’re clearly going to need a Big BoPper both in himself and to manage all the sound tracks we’re coming up with.
D-Chance.
Nukes?
Oh, great, we’ve poisoned the whole fucking Gulf of Mexico, let’s contaminate it with radiation, too…
God help us, we’re not only living the Apocalypse, and we’re doing our damnedest to speed it along.
Evinfuilt
Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
—
damn, been beaten to the quote, many times over.
The idea of nuking it comes from the Soviets (not Russians in this case) who did it 6 times before. I’m a bit pessimistic right now, I don’t see the downside being that the area the nuke would go off is already a hard place to survive due to the dead zone caused by our fertilizer run-off.
Mr Furious
The Boston Globe has a brutal gallery of photos from the Gulf.
Normally, something like this would push me over a rage cliff… Not today. Too heartbreaking.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: I think it was OS 9 in the movie. OS X was introduced so that the aliens couldn’t come back and hack us.
jwb
@scav: BoPlicity.
Martin
@D-Chance.: They don’t need one of those giant city destroyers. A small tactical guy should do the trick, and if deep (it’d need to be at least half a mile below the surface) there’d be almost no radiation leak.
People watch too many movies.
apikoros
@Michael: , have you ever read any of the “SPQR” books by John Maddox Roberts? Remember the character Cato? My goodness! Your ideas are positively Roman!
I’m very concerned that the spill stop. I’d like it to stop tomorrow… hell, I’da liked it to stop a month ago! But I’m not yet at the point of spraying the wives and children of people not yet convicted of anything with poisonous substances! If you want to talk arrests and trials, yes! I’m right there! but after the oil stops, please. Then I am willing to put a bunch of people in jail for very long periods of time. I *like* that!
Side note… we keep hearing about these people in the MMS and their bribery… why do I hear nothing of referrals to DoJ???
Mnemosyne
Here’s another look at the poll numbers. Basically, people are pissed that the problem hasn’t been fixed, and everyone is getting a share of the blame.
It looks pretty fairly distributed to me, actually. The people who are actually at fault get by far the biggest share of the blame.
Emma
Martin: Can we live with the consequences if it goes wrong? Oil is bad enough, but radiation…
Comrade Dread
Damn it, man, what’s not to understand! The Atlanteans have been shopping for yellowcake Uranium from Africa.
We must stop Squidam Hussein now.
FlipYrWhig
@MikeJ: I love cheesy disaster movies, and this was a decent example of the genre, but I had no idea so many people had apparently seen it: The Core (2003).
Zifnab
@Emma: I was thinking more along the lines of “Let’s assume this doesn’t work – how the hell will we even know about it, given that we’ve created enough debris to cloud out whatever leak is left.”
Ideally, yes – you want to cause a cave in that shuts off the leak. But the way an oil well is set up is by finding a dense pocket of oil, putting it under even more pressure, and then cracking a hole in the sheet of rock holding the oil down. Detonating a nuke could just put more cracks in the cap rock, at which point we’d have a dozen oil leaks rather than just the three we’re working with now.
Jon H
@Tom in NOLA: “But seriously, why not just drop a goddamn 30,000-ton slab of concrete on top of the pipe, followed by another big slab to make sure the pipe is completely flattened and the flow is cut off?”
The first ‘hat’ was 100 tons. The ice that formed was making it float.
Dropping a heavy weight on the pipe won’t necessarily stop the flow. If the pipe wall were cracked while being crushed, the oil would just come through the cracks.
I’m not sure even 30,000 tons could reliably be used to crush the BOP flat without ending up with a still-leaky pipe under 30,000 tons of concrete.
I think it probably has to be sealed off in the bore hole, not above the sea bed.
debbie
No nukes. They’re too unpredictable. I want BP to survive so it can be crucified.
demimondian
@Martin: Um — you don’t know what you’re talking about.
In fact, one of the major reasons that the Soviet PNE program has remained nuked (so to speak) was the unexpected release of radioactive by-products from the buried devices. (The Chagan Test, if you’re interested.) Notice that the particular incident was under near optimal conditions, and was performed with a relatively small device (only ~150kt). Nuking deep horizon would be done under near pessimal conditions — and would need an equivalent device.
It would be foolish. We may try it anyway, but it is far less likely to work than to fail, and most likely to fail in the worst possible way.
Alan
A nuke is a crazy idea. I don’t know why they don’t construct some kind of balloon or freeze plug thingamajig and stick one down each pipe and inflate or expand it.
celticdragonchick
@anonymoose:
Why don’t we roll in some canisters of CN-20 and nerve gas the whole fucking…er…nest?
celticdragonchick
@Jon H:
I agree. The pressure of the oil coming from below (it is driven by lithostatic pressure which is insanely greater then anything I can describe here in understandable terms) will not be deterred by just dumping a slab of concrete on it. It will erode away the surrounding sediment and keep right on gushing away.
Martin
@Emma: 150kt is pretty big by today’s tactical standards (thinking more like 1kt-5kt), and they clearly didn’t detonate it half a mile down. We only need enough force to crush the pipe and seal it. The well is 35,000 feet deep. We can push it pretty far down there.
celticdragonchick
@Zifnab:
Maybe, maybe not. The idea is that the nuke is set off nearby and crushes the borehole. I do not know what the elasticity properties of the overburden seds are, but you will not have as much problems with cracking that could lead to the surface considering the extreme depth we are working with.
However, it will take as long to bore a nuke hole as it will to just drill the relief well we are already drilling.
Important note!
celticdragonchick
@Alan:
The pressure differential of the oil and gas spewing out and difficulty of the site depth make those ideas nigh impossible.
Martin
@Emma: We’ve put more than our fair share of radiation down there now. 8 nuclear submarines have been scuttled in the ocean, we blew the shit out of the Pacific, which was hardly without incident, but we’re talking about a couple of kilotons deep underground compared to numerous megaton blasts in the Pacific at the surface.
Yeah, radiation is bad, but so is half a billion gallons of oil strewn through the marshes.
Martin
@Alan: That’s basically what the relief wells are designed to do. They’ll tunnel into the side of the existing well and then we’ll pump concrete down there and freeze the whole damn thing up.
FormerSwingVoter
Really? Are people honestly still going on about using a nuke?
No. It’s a stupid idea. Let’s, at the very least, try the less stupid ideas first and see how they work.
scav
and for its next trick, the great american public will attempt open heart surgery by committee using a live-time suggestion box developed by NASA and Microsoft and inspired by 1970s disaster films and re-runs of General Hospital!
4tehlulz
Everyone should have nukes for emergencies just like this one.
Jay in Oregon
@QuaintIrene:
Don’t ask me; I’m still giggling like Beavis over the “junk shot” plan.
Andrew
Sorry did you say “Nuke” ? Why can’t more conventional explosives be used, Nuking sounds like trying get a fly off your nose with a chainsaw, yeah you will get rid of the fly but you will no doubt have more pressing problems after it is gone.
Citizen_X
@Martin: Awesome. “The candy store of the oil and gas kingdom” needs to added to the rotating headers NAO!
Emma
Zifnab: Thank you. That was my (admittedly WA) guess.
Dick Weathers
Woo Hoo! Kill the shit outta that oil!
Emma
Martin: Except that if we have the political will (which is a big if, I grant you) we can pour a lot of resources into saving those marshes and make a damn good job of it. But how do we scrub the whole ocean?
apikoros
Martin, I had a short conversation with my brother over the weekend on this subject. His answers were mostly questions (like: So what’s the sea bed there? Mud? how deep? etc. etc), but what I did gather is that we have something called a MOAB weighing in at 5 tons of HE. Conventional and we have many many of them (my brother did not know exactly, but hundreds if not thousands). In any reasonable bottom dropping them from a moderate height (not the full mile) achieves terminal velocity and their design penetrates the sea floor for a couple hundred feet. W/O a fuse, they would encircle the wellhead. The final round is fused and sets the others off effectively at once. This turns the bottom, to a depth of 500-1500 feet into rubble that plugs the well.
Does this sound reasonable to you? According to him, the bombs are guidable and he believes changing from radio control to acoustic control would be a piece of cake, so guidance should be possible.
Chuck Butcher
Things that go “bang” are not a good idea. What they do is splash soft stuff and break hard stuff. If you think it is a good idea to start a bunch of fractures over a pressurized system that is pierced by a single hard steel hole you’ve got different ideas of good.
Let’s make gravel of the top of the oil field or create cracks all around anything that theoretically melts. Ah well, immediate gratification rules, I suppose.
Mnemosyne
@apikoros:
If Va Highlander is right at #48, then a couple hundred feet isn’t going to get you there. They need to get through 600 feet of sea floor to get to where the hole is.
This is one of the reasons the damn thing is still gushing 5 weeks after the explosion — getting to the source of the leak is difficult as hell.
frosty
@apikoros: Push it down with what, might I ask?
The stuff you use to push things down a well is called drilling mud. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do now.
If if fails, they’ll try to intercept the original well with a new (relief) well, and pump the drilling mud down through it.
And a nuke in the bottom of the Gulf, with 100s of feet of Mississippi mud? Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine a 5 gallon bucket of chocolate pudding. Put your face in the pudding. Blow as hard as you can. Did that have any effect on the pudding?
moops
The nuclear bomb option is not as terrible an idea as some are claiming. It is also not as fantastic either.
first, the amount of radioactive material this blast would produce is acceptable. At a distance of a few miles from the site it would not be much above the earth’s crust at the ocean bottom. The isotopes produced would be diffused into the ocean. there would be little or no radioactive pollution that could reach the surface. deep ocean blasts are the least environmentally painful kind we know of. Several days of petroleum into the ocean would be of comparable toxic consequences.
I know, how dare I think any radioactivity is “acceptable”. well, you can all go firebagger on my ass for being a pragmatist.
it is very improbably that the blast would rend the rock underneath. there is several hundred feet of mud about the actual rock. The goal of the blast would be the ultimate TopKill. destroy the piping through the entire mud layer, collapse the channel, let the hundreds of feet of mud cap the hole in the rock.
they STILL would need the relief well, but this would create a mud/glass cap.
it will also destroy the BOP and make a radioactive mess of the blast site, so if it doesn’t work, well, we could have a full no-BOP flowrate of oil until the relief well kills the well in the rock layer.
I doubt you could move the required amount of mud with conventional explosives.
but, I’m guessing this idea has been considered at DOE and it isn’t seen as the best option at this time.
Corner Stone
@4tehlulz:
Even though I loves me some shrimp, I ain’t giving ’em my fucking nuke for this cluster.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
A little perspective is needed. It took 10 months to close the last gulf oil hole like this one, the Ixtoc l in 1979.
DavidJPostlethwait
@Corner Stone: If God had wanted the shrimp to survive, he would have given them their own nucular weapons!
Mike Kay
….Bomb, bomb, bomb….. bomb, bomb Iran.
oh wait…
stickler
Nukes? On top of the oil that’s already swirling around?
Remember, you shrimp and oyster lovers: Shellfish, the final filter of the sea.
Mmmm, tasty!
Steve
just wanted to say this post title was extremely lollicious.
demimondian
@moops: Um…no
The problem is the neutron absorption. A nuke detonated in water gives you all sorts of awesome neutron scattering, and, as a result, a lovely, lovely isotope soup. The solid stuff gets marvelously mixed up — and remember, you get extra mass out of each neutron, and fewer escape. Oh, and you heat up a large, large volume of water to boiling, which bursts through the surface, expands, and promptly rains that isotope soup on the sea.
And not so promptly rains that isotope soup across the southern US.
No, you do not want to go there.
Ked
@demimondian:
Um… no. Not in the water, but well below the sea floor.
…wait, moops was basically talking about nuking the BOP. That is crazy talk, and I’m a guy who basically likes the idea.
All the prior art in this is underground dets. Though as someone pointed out upthread you’ll have a relief well drilled before you can get this solution in place anyway.
Michael
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The interesting thing about Ixtoc is that it wasn’t at the mouth of one of the larger river systems in the world, one chock full of nutrients for what had been thriving fisheries, a river that flows right smack into a major current.
So when conservatards go on about how Ixtoc didn’t cause that much catastrophe, remind them of the difference.
Lit3Bolt
Ok, fine, read none of my comments. Here’s my very first one and I think we’ve been talking at cross ends ever since.
My point has been, and has always been, about the political response to the oil spill. I’ve never said Obama should extend his super president penis and close the well with merely that. I’ve never said responsibility and thus liability for closing the well and cleaning the spill should be taken away from BP. My point is that his political response is starting to stink. They are two different beasts. You guys think doing anything political with the oil spill is cheerleading and wishing for daddy figures, and come off as doucebags with zero empathy for an unparalleled disaster in US history by rushing to defend Obama against any and all perceived Fox News memes. We’ll see how the next two days play out. I sure hope Obama is not betting is Presidency on this top kill shit working.
Ranger 3
I think we should launch a full spread of nukes at the 5 largest cities in the US. This will do nothing to stop the leak, but it will make it seem like much less of a problem.
FYI… I live in the 8th largest city in the US.
Yutsano
Initial signs look positive, although it’s still too early to determine if everything worked yet.
bob h
Hopefully we are seeing mud in and mud out now, with little oil.
Royce
People are actually defending the idea of — judiciously, as you will — detonating a nuclear explosive off the southern coast of the USA?
Is that question is some kind of traitor-bait? If so, Ked and apikoros seem to have been outed. Otherwise my beautiful mind requires believing this is just high-level snark that’s going over my head.
— Also too…
I understand the need to have BP’s engineers and division managers/workers in place to work to stop the oil spill … but why haven’t the executive management been removed from their positions?
That’s my problem with the Obama Administration and Congress’s response to the oil-spill catastrophe. The CEO ain’t the one with the tech know-how.