Nuke the damn oil leak!!

Wait, the OP means literally to use a nuclear bomb to stop the leak? Oh ffs...
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
You obviously just "have an irrational fear of nuclear weapons".
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Back when I was drilling holes in the Permian basin (The only summer job a college kid could get in that area), the practice was, after the hole was made, to use dynamite to fracture the formation to release more oil and let it flow to the hole. They do it differently now, I'm told.
So, other than the problem of fitting a nuke down a 16" diameter hole that has pipe and other junk sticking out of it blocking the way, we are faced with some obstacles: Either set it off too shallow, thereby generating either a mound of rubble for the radioactive oil to leak through, or a crater with a bigger hole;setting it off too deeply, collapsing the formation and creating a huge crater of rubble with radioactive oil leaking through lots of places, or cracking the formation with lots of additional leaks; possible getting it just right and sealing it off, with lots of radioactive oil down there; or something else
I vote "something else"
 
leftysergeant said:
Arrest the board of directors of their US operation and everyone not directly working in production and put them on a ship in the spill zone and tell everyone else that they are stuck there with the executives until it is capped and that the Coast Guard is in charge.
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Congratulations you've just arrested the people who might actualy be able to fix things. This is drilling not production.

The Coast Guard can bring in Chevron and the response teams who clean up behind Saddam in Gulf I.
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Who did a unacceptably poor job then and in any case will have lost rather a lot of people over the time gap.


Precisdely. The Coast Guard would not be aggravating the situation by using dispersants.
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The Coast Guard would be doing whatever BP tells it. While there is a theoretical posibility that Thad Allen is able to do things without BP's say so there is limited evidence of this actualy happening.

But still suppose you fired him. Well that might improve the quality of the booming but for everthing else this is outside their remit. The Coast Guard have no idea what injection of dispersants at depth does (they also can't stop the airforce from using them) so no idea if it is good or bad. The Coastguard doesn't know if anything BP is doing is worthwhile or if they are just killing time waiting for the relief wells. Now BP are not certian either but they at least have some idea.

And they could stand guard to see that the BP people do not abandon their posts.
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Won't help you. You think the guys with the computer models and the ideas on what to try next are anywhere near the platform?
 
If you can't trust Bill Nye, who can you trust?
College Park, Md.: Why can't we use explosives to collapse the leaking well?

Bill Nye: Explosives would almost certainly blow the gusher opening wider rather than narrower. Gravity is being overwhelmed by the ancient pressure trapped in the oil and gas deposit deep under the seafloor.
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If we can't trust these people to prevent a leak, or stop a leak, do we really trust them not to spread irradiated oil over the gulf coast?

Also, even if it works and only irradiates the underground oil, don't we have a danger of another well tapping in to that same irradiated oil?
 
Congratulations you've just arrested the people who might actualy be able to fix things.
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That's S.O.P. in any Communist nirvana: arrest or kill anybody who is competent; replace with government bureaucrats and apparatchiks; when the inevitable collapse happens, blame the "imperialists" (or whomever); rinse, repeat.
 
geni said:
I think it's more the "nukes are cool" thing. The idea that you can solve problems rather rapaidly with nuclear weapons is attractive. I suspect that was at least part of the motivation behind Operation Plowshare and Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy.
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A lot of insight into the motivations behind Plowshare and similar efforts can be gained by learning about Edward Teller. After almost single-handedly trashing Oppenheimer in Congressional testimony he became a pariah in the scientific community, and started (continued?) cosying up to the military and the nascent nuclear industry. He made himself the poster child for advocacy of all things nuclear, and bomb development was his personal pet love. Discussions and implementations of various test ban treaties that were going on at the time were a direct challenge to him, and the idea of continuing development of nuclear explosives under the rather thin cover of "peaceful applications" was irresistible to him. He didn't fool anyone who didn't want to be fooled. He was looking for ways to further the design and construction of bigger and better bombs.
 
Skeptic said:
That's S.O.P. in any Communist nirvana: arrest or kill anybody who is competent; replace with government bureaucrats and apparatchiks; when the inevitable collapse happens, blame the "imperialists" (or whomever); rinse, repeat.
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Very true.

Well, in the first few decades of a Communist country's life at least, then they tend to even out as the old guard die off/are helped to die out.

However, unless North Korea is helping tap the leak, I fail to see what Communists or Communism have to do with any of this...?
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
America was born via war, hence Americans tend towards war as a solution.

Nukes whupped the Japs and held back the reds, hence Nuke em as a strategy.

When you look at the thinking through a historical prism it's pretty obvious.
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America wasn't born via war. It was born via the pursuit of FREEDOM! It was this honorable and noble quest for....

ha ha, I nearly got it all the way out. Hoo, boy. I haz the humerz. But honestly, can you think of a nation that wasn't born via war?
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
Very true.

Well, in the first few decades of a Communist country's life at least, then they tend to even out as the old guard die off/are helped to die out.

However, unless North Korea is helping tap the leak, I fail to see what Communists or Communism have to do with any of this...?
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leftysergeant is a communist, and that's who skeptic was referring to.
 
leftysergeant said:
It has never been done underwater and few things have ever been done that far underwater. Mistakes are just too much to contemplate.

The only thing Simmons called right was that Obama should order the BP wonks out of the way and take command.

Just be sure that the BP people leave the credit cardss behind when they leave.

We need their engineers and laborers, not their bean counters and managers.
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No-n no no no. If Obama lets BP handle it, it's still BP's fault. If he takes over, it's solely his fault - if the Gubmint succeeds, Obama will get slammed for not taking over sooner, and if it fails, Obama will get slammed for failing.
 
geni said:
Congratulations you've just arrested the people who might actualy be able to fix things. This is drilling not production.



Who did a unacceptably poor job then and in any case will have lost rather a lot of people over the time gap.




The Coast Guard would be doing whatever BP tells it. While there is a theoretical posibility that Thad Allen is able to do things without BP's say so there is limited evidence of this actualy happening.

But still suppose you fired him. Well that might improve the quality of the booming but for everthing else this is outside their remit. The Coast Guard have no idea what injection of dispersants at depth does (they also can't stop the airforce from using them) so no idea if it is good or bad. The Coastguard doesn't know if anything BP is doing is worthwhile or if they are just killing time waiting for the relief wells. Now BP are not certian either but they at least have some idea.



Won't help you. You think the guys with the computer models and the ideas on what to try next are anywhere near the platform?
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What? The people they'd be holding are suits. They don't do the actual drilling. You must be new at this.

Nukes aren't a good idea, because if they don't work, then there would be miles of coastline coated with radioactive golf balls, fish and oil, followed by more radioactive oil, and no fishing there for 50 years. But other explosives could work if they were detonated as unidirectionally as possible towards the leak, possibly moving ocean floor over it.

Last resort is we could dump tons of kitty litter on the leak. It works on leaks at the gas station.
 
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Dorian Gray said:
America wasn't born via war. It was born via the pursuit of FREEDOM! It was this honorable and noble quest for....

ha ha, I nearly got it all the way out. Hoo, boy. I haz the humerz. But honestly, can you think of a nation that wasn't born via war?
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Belgium was born via Opera.*

*Ok, there was kind of a war, or at least uprising. Still, an Opera. <golf clap>


While it's true that nations are founded in war, I can't really think of another nation besides America that has embraced warfare so deeply in to it's identity. Well, outside of classical times anyway.

I can not honestly think of any, at any time in history, as self deceiving about their might and use of that might though.

At least the Romans were honest with themselves. But they did eat Lark's tongues, so to hell with that.
 
Meadmaker said:
Maybe if we used a nuke, it would cause a bizarre mutation that would result in the spawning of a gigantic, water breathing, Dutch boy, who could then stick his finger in the hole?

All radioactive Dutch boys aside, I do think that if this idea would work it ought to be done, and I would hope that people are at least considering the option. I, personally, have no clue whether this is an obvious solution, or whether it's a totally nutty suggestion. I just don't know enough about geology to know if a large explosion in the neighborhood of an oil well would close off the outlet, or make it very, very, large.
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If a REALLY BIG explosion is a feasible solution I think it still needs to be asked if that explosion needs to be nuclear. Conventional explosives can manage quite a bit. What we're actually asking is if the REALLY BIGGER explosion possible by using a nuke is a superior solution. Other possible negative consequences aside (e.g. radioactivity) I think the first questions should be answered ... well ... first. Would a big boom do the job, and does it need to be that big? It seems to me that most engineering solutions using explosives get their best results by using less, and using them intelligently.
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
However, unless North Korea is helping tap the leak, I fail to see what Communists or Communism have to do with any of this...?
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Just that Leftysergeant is the forum's resident CP member.

I was replying to his suggestion of arresting (and presumably liquidating) people he dislikes so as to replace them with left-wing government bureaucrats, those icons of efficiency and competence, as a way to deal with the oil spill crisis.

He did the same before in many cases -- that's the only "solution" he knows to any crisis. What this world needs, he believes, is a little more of North Korea's attitude in its veins.

You are quite right that no other communists except for him have anything to do with the oil spill, so far as I know.
 
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Skeptic said:
Just that Leftysergeant is the forum's resident CP member. I was replying to his usual Leninist "solution" to every crisis, to arrest (and presumably liquidate) people he dislikes so as to replace them with left-wing government bureaucrats, those icons of efficiency and competence. He did the same before in many cases -- that's the only "solution" he knows to any problem.
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I see.

I asked because everywhere I look I see people calling Obama a socialist or communist, which I find quite hilarious.


Leftysergeant: I assume that we would arrest them as some kind of preventative measure, for the public good?

As in American we're not in the habit of locking people up and taking over their concerns out of hand.

So the premise is that we'd be using emergency powers due to extraordinary circumstances?
 
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