Should We Nuke the BP Oil Well?
Richard Moore
rticleId=20003
Should We Nuke the BP Oil Well?
By Washington's Blog
Global Research<http://www.globalresearch.ca/>, July 2, 2010
Washington's Blog<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/>
CBS News<http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20004828-501465.html>,
the Christian Science
Monitor<http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-just-drop-a-n
uclear-bomb-on-the-Gulf-oil-spill>,
CNN<http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/11/nuke-the-oil-well/> and
Reuters<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6611RF20100702> have
all asked whether BP should nuke its leaking oil well.
Indeed, some high-level Russian nuclear scientists and oil industry
experts have suggested such that approach to stop the Gulf oil
gusher.
Here<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU> is archival footage
of the Russians killing a gas leak with a nuclear device.
And Obama's energy secretary and Nobel prize winning physicist
Steven Chu
included<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/772
6142/Barack-Obama-sends-nuclear-experts-to-tackle-BPs-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-leak
.html> the man who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 1950s on the
5-man brain trust tasked with stopping the oil.
And oil industry expert Matt Simmons
proposes<http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0529/energy-expert-nuke-oil-leak/> the
use of a tactical nuclear device every time he is interviewed on
national television.
However, even the history of Russia's successful use of nuclear
devices to stop gushers has some important caveats.
As the Reuters article notes:
Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace's Moscow office is even more
insistent that BP not heed the advice of the veteran Soviet physicists.
Chuprov disputes the veterans' accounts of the peaceful explosions
and says several of the gas leaks reappeared later. "What was praised
as a success and a breakthrough by the Soviet Union is in essence
a lie," he says.
[Former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran
Soviet physicist Viktor] Mikhailov agrees that the USSR had to give
up its program because of problems it presented. "I ended the program
because I knew how worthless this all was," he says with a sigh.
"Radioactive material was still seeping through cracks in the ground
and spreading into the air. It wasn't worth it."
The Christian Science Monitor points out:
The Russians previously used nukes at least five times to seal off
gas well fires. Komsomoloskaya Pravda suggested that the United
States might as well take a chance with a nuke, based on the
historical 20% failure rate. Still, the Soviet experience with
nuking underground gas wells could prove easier in retrospect than
trying to seal the Gulf of Mexicos oil well disaster thats taking
place 5,000 feet below the surface. The Russians were using nukes
to extinguish gas well fires in natural gas fields, not sealing oil
wells gushing liquid, so there are big differences, and this method
has never been tested in such conditions.
The CBS News article points out that not all of the Russians nukes
worked:
But not each use of nuclear energy did the trick. A 4 kiloton charge
set off in Russia's Kharkov region failed to stop a gas blowout.
"The explosion was mysteriously left on the surface, forming a
mushroom cloud," the paper reported.
Indeed, several experts have said that nuking the well might make
the situation worse.
The Reuters article notes:
There is a chance any blast could fracture the seabed and cause an
underground blowout, according to Andy Radford, petroleum engineer
and American Petroleum Institute senior policy adviser on offshore
issues.
The CNN report notes that nuking the leaking well could conceivably
destabilize other oil wells miles away.
The New York Times
writes<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03nuke.html>:
Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear
bomb would be ... risky technically, with unknown and possibly
disastrous consequences from radiation ....
A senior Los Alamos scientist, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because his comments were unauthorized, ridiculed the idea of using
a nuclear blast to solve the crisis in the gulf.
Its not going to happen, he said. Technically, it would be exploring
new ground in the midst of a disaster and you might make it worse.
And one of the world's top physicists - string theorist Michio Kaku
- writes<http://bigthink.com/ideas/20443>:
I think this is a bad idea, from a physics point of view. Let me
say that my mentor while I was in high school and at Harvard, Edward
Teller, father of the H-bomb, was a firm advocate of using nuclear
weapons to dig out canals and other grand engineering projects.
***
Underground, we then have a hollow sphere of vaporized gas, with
walls that have been glassified from the sand. This hollow sphere
is stable from a few hours to a few days, but eventually the weight
of the rock collapses the sphere. The result is a sudden collapse
of the sphere, often releasing radioactive gas into the environment.
***
If this takes place under the sea floor (which has never been done
before), there are bound to be complications. First, there would
be the release of dangerous, water-soluble chemicals such as
radioactive iodine, strontium, and cesium, which would contaminate
the food chain in the Gulf. Second, the "seal"
created by the glassified sand is probably unstable. And third, it
might actually make the problem worse, creating many mini leaks on
the ocean floor.
Determining the precise effect of such an underwater blast would
depend on crucial computer simulations of the various layers of
rock under the seafloor, which has never been done before.
In other words, this would bea huge science experiment, with
unintended consequences. Furthermore, with hurricane season upon
us, and predictions of eight or more hurricanes for this season,
it means that seawater several hundred feet below the surface of
the water could be churned up and then deposited over the South.
This seawater, containing oils and radioactive fission products,
would magnify the environmental problem.
In summary, it is not a good idea to use nukes to seal up oil leaks.
Moreover, President Bill Clinton
told<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwkzasc0rpU&feature=player_embedded>
CNN on Sunday (starting 3:13 into video) that he has looked into
the issue, and that a nuke is not needed. He said the Navy can use
conventionalexplosives to seal the well. As the former commander-in-chief,
Clinton is probably getting such information from someone high up
in the Navy.
For more on the nuclear option, see
this<http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6532>.
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