NUKE the Gulf Oil Geyser?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0tsTgBKmhU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPKR1YJP9JA

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russian-paper-suggests-nuclear-explosion-cut-gulf-oil-geyser/

As British Petroleum scrambles to affix a four-story, 70-ton dome over the massive oil geyser venting toxic sludge into the Gulf of Mexico, people everywhere are wondering what else can be done to stem the deadly tide.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, Russia's best-selling daily publication, has an idea: Why not just nuke it?

During the Soviet years, Russia's communists had to deal with numerous oil disasters and on five different occasions they employed controlled, underground nuclear blasts to quickly solve the problem.

underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel," Pracda reported.


Death Angel ~ Seemingly Endless Time



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEDbJc_c1CI

thats the ticket use a nuke on it :eyes:

Followed by a chill up my spine and a lengthy LOL at the thought.

I was picturing the nuke scene in "True Lies".

Using a nuke would cause more problems than it would solve.

If they were going to go the explosives route, drilling a borehole a few thousand feet down, pouring ANFO down in it, and blasting conventionally would collapse the well without causing an international incident or making the Gulf of Mexico radioactive...

:sarcasm:

Send him out there in a boat with all the ANFO he can carry.

:yoiks:

3+ months to drill a relief well... how would they get a bomb down even deeper than that in less time?

Not even a movie supervillain could do it.

Steve Buscemi?

So 10,000 meters in 90 days means roughly 120m per day. 1500m would take two weeks.

The goal would be to emplace the device parallel to the oil well shaft. The detonation causes shockwave causes the well to collapse along a km long front sealing the well. Only reason you need to drill down 1.5km is to minimize radioactive release (most will be contained in rock).

Still it is a bad idea for a lot of other reasons (the radiological reasons, public opinion, risk, likely would take EPA longer to approve it than to drill relief well, etc) but seems like it could (and has multiple times in Soviet Union) work.

The US did some crazy experiments in the 1960s using nuclear devices as demolition tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosions

fictional solutions like those from 24, are always what the RW wants us to try. Who are we, Wile. E. Coyote? We need to try an Acme Portable Hole before we try an Acme Small Nuke. Just My Opinion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05spill.html?ref=us

WASHINGTON — In a closed-door briefing for members of Congress, a senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow...

this is a disaster. The hedging will evolve, too.

:(