There’s probably some reason why no one’s brought it up, but here goes. Why not just use high explosives on the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
Send some explosives right down the shaft and detonate them. The leak will seal itself. At least, that’s what was suggested to me by an engineer, who was working, I admit, slightly out of his field. I’d welcome comments from those who know undersea oil wells a bit better. Why isn’t this the obvious answer?
Jason Kuznicki
Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.
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I was wondering just that a couple weeks ago. Apparently, Russia successfully employed nuclear weapons to stop similar deep sea leaks on several occasions – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100513/ts_ynews/ynews_ts2052
Here are the only compelling reasons I’ve heard not to try this:
1. It could open up additional fissures near the surface; not increasing flow necessarily, but making more holes to cap if it fails
2. At present, the flow isn’t near its maximum rate because the holes are occluded to some extent; a failed explosion could clear the path and maximize the rate of flow
3. Apparently the sea floor in the Gulf is basically mud and not rock, so things that might’ve worked elsewhere won’t work in the Gulf.
Whenever you bring this up, people dismiss it as absurd. Yet, dropping a giant dome on top of a leaking pipe is totally reasonable?Report
@Zach, Also, I don’t think it’s possible to get into the shaft at this moment; once they have that sort of access, there are various plans to shoot things into the well and hope it plugs the leak. I think a quick explosive fix would need to be a fairly large bomb (might as well be nuclear) that would probably fuse the sand/rock beneath it. Is this what happens at ground zero for nuclear detonations? I have no clue.Report
@Zach, Also, I don’t know how well it could penetrate a mile of water, but it’s probably worth a shot to mount this on a ship and aim it at the leak -http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.htmlReport
Dumb question: Isn’t the oil and methane down there sort of, y’know, combustible?Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, Yes, sortof, but combustion needs oxygen and that’s not something they have in ample supply down there. For similar reasons I’m skeptical that normal chemical explosives would even work at those depths and pressures. Explosives also need air to work don’t they?
I mean their dome failed because the cold and pressure down there is so great that the methane gas froze into crystals on the underside of the dome. Consider that for a moment; methane gas not just liquified but frozen solid.Report
@North,
Many types of explosives contain their own oxygen and would explode perfectly well just about anywhere.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I suspected as much Jason. But we’re still talking enormous pressure and temperature environments. Chemistry gets really funky and loopey when you change the pressure and temperature of it’s environment too much.Report
@North, ” Explosives also need air to work don’t they? ”
No, in fact a definition of an explosive might be ‘fuel mixed with oxidizer’.Report
@North, Torpedoes.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, the oil down there is also something like 6 miles below the sea floor. This was/is an epically deep well. Ditto on combustion, also.
As far as propagated damage goes, I suspect/hope that wells nearby could (1) be shut down ahead of time and (2) are immune to fairly severe vibrations since there are occasionally some significant earthquakes in the Gulf.Report
@Zach, and, I would hope we have a plethora of data on the propagation of energy from underwater explosions. Did we ever do a nuke test at this sort of depth, though? Seems like it’d be a useful weapon to destroy undersea cabling and whatnot.Report
@Zach, I don’t think we’ve ever tested nukes at that depth. We did shallow water testing at Bikini Atoll. I think nukes are definitley off the table. No way is the public going to support that.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, I looked into it and Operation Wigwam was at a depth of 2000 feet – http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Wigwam.html – with minimal impact at the surface. We could probably manage with a blast smaller than 30 kt, also.
I agree that the public wouldn’t support it, but I can’t see how it’s rational to passively accept the utility of a magic dome with a straw on the top over a pretty simple solution.Report
I am no engineer, but I believe there are other wells close by–so propagating a massive shock wave through the water might damage them or even cause additional spills.Report
Having discussed a similar idea recently with some oily friends, the bas problem seems to be that the shaft is too narrow and the pressures too great to drop a bomb down. This leaves a surface detonation, which ill presumably make a large crater, rather than fill in the shaft (here the water pressure might help, by directing a greater fraction of the bomb’s energy downwards, but my guess is still that you just end up fracturing the rock),Report
I also wonder whether all the public figures who insist they believe in the efficacy of prayer are praying for the leak to seal itself. And if not, why not?Report
@Mike Schilling, because they don’t, when it comes to something that they value themselves. ‘Healing’ for others – fine, pray and send them money. When they get sick, it’s the hospital.Report
@Mike Schilling,
Oh they are. I’ve seen the mocking.Report
I thought that, too, when word got out that the spill was actually of epic proportions. I think that there may a chance that explosives would make the situation even worse, which could be why it’s not being done.Report
@And, You’ve got to way the chance of that happening with the certainty of waiting months for a relief well to be drilled. If there were a 90% chance of a nuke stopping this problem two weeks ago, a 5% chance of it doing nothing, and a 5% chance of it increasing the flow rate, would it be worth the risk? It’s a reasonable question to ask, but no one’s even discussing the possibility.Report
@Zach, I think the concern is all that radioactivity washing up on the Gulf Coast just as vacation season starts.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, That’s entirely a psychological concern. Check out the wigwam data; a blast that’s bigger than what this would require at a lesser depth resulted in minimal surface radiation. A 10 or 20 kt nuke could do the trick and not be noticed at all on shore. This is assuming, obviously, that the whole idea is a good one to start with insofar as it actually working goes.
I agree that it’s a nonstarter, but that’s because of a public ignorance that I really don’t understand. The imagined danger of a deep sea nuke somehow outweighs the real, present danger from a huge oil spill?Report
@Zach,
I think the point is more they’re not entirely sure what the probabilities are, and the USN hasn’t had a tactical nuke delivery system for their subs for some time so whether there is the operational expertise to even use a nuke in the manner described is kinda iffy.
I’d imagine, too that BP still has delusions that it can recoup this well and get it working again, which probably also dictate what actions are being taken.Report
@Zach, you’re aware of the potential solutions the actors involved are and are not discussing? You must have some serious connections.Report