|
This seems very elementary to me, which makes me wonder why no one has thought of it before. In fact, it seems SO basic and easy that all I can think is that other people smarter than me HAVE thought of it and dismissed it for reasons that do not occur to me. That being said, I think I have come up with an idea to prevent any further disasters involving offshore oil rigs. My question to you is whether or not it is feasible.
My idea boils down to two simple words: retaining wall. Once your offshore oil rig is built, go out a sufficient distance from the rig in all directions and construct a retaining wall of whatever super-strong material is most popular at the time (although I kind of see it in my own mind as some form of plexiglass, but maybe that's just because I've been watching hockey), and completely surround/encase the rig inside it. The wall would go all the way down to the ocean floor and below it to whatever depth is safest, and it would extend out of the water to a height that is higher than the highest point of the oil rig (for reasons to be discussed later). Sort of like putting a big cylinder around the rig.
This way, if there's a situation like the one with the BP rig, the oil can gush and gusy all day long and it just stays within the cylinder until we can figure out what to do with it. The cylinder also protects the rig from other disasters as well. For example, if a fire broke out (which I'd imagine is more common than a spill), all that would need to happen is all the workers would be evacuated, and then a big helicopter would drop the "top" (a round piece of retaining wall material that completely covers the entire cylinder) onto the top of the retaining wall cylinder, and the fire would eventually burn itself out of air and burn itself out. Maybe the top could even be attached in some way, and closed mechanically (although I thought the idea of a big helicopter airlifting a giant circle out to the rig was a cool image).
So now I'd like to hear from the people who know more about this stuff than I do. The engineers and physicists and smart guys of all stripe. Would this idea work? Why or why not? And if it WOULD work, why am I the first person to think of it? As I said above, it seems pretty elementary to me.
|