Friday, June 18, 2010

What happens if we nuke the well, or something?

See update posted at the end.

I really, really, REALLY hope the relief wells are on or ahead of schedule, and that the well bore is at least intact enough to support the relief well kill procedure.

Because those relief wells are the last (gulp) engineering options left.









UPDATE:  Ok, Salon.com already has a piece on this, which I didn't know about (hey, it's Salon, after all).   It seems the Soviets did it successfully not just once, or even twice.  They did it successfully three times.  A fourth attempt failed in 1981 (Reagan's fault, by the Obama regime's logic).  There are big differences between a landside gas well and a deepwater oil well 5,000 feet below the surface. And, there are the geologic uncertainties to worry about:


This is just speculation, but I'm also guessing that we don't have a whole lot of data about what happens to the geology of a deepwater oil reservoir when a nuclear bomb is detonated in the general vicinity. I'd hate to be the president who authorized a nuclear strike against an oil well and discover that the blast created numerous fractures in the seafloor that allowed even more oil and gas to escape. It seems to me that one might want to hold such a tactic in reserve as a last resort.

Yikes.  How about holding such a tactic in reserve as a never-to-use resort?

At the end of the Salon piece is a snippet from the History Channel's Mega Disaster series.  It's definitely worth checking out.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

0 comments :

Post a Comment

You must have a Google Account to post a comment.

WARNING: Posting on this blog is a privilege. You have no First Amendment rights here. I am the sole, supreme and benevolent dictator. This blog commenting system also has a patented Dumbass Detector. Don't set it off.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.