Simmons Says Obama Should Detonate Nukes to Seal Oil Leak;

Why does it have to be a nuke?
two lines

What about all the animals,plants etc that live in the gulf? Sure they may be dying now but more would die from this. What about people who live near the gulf?
This seems like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. Oh let's just nuke it and save the day? This just seems like a bad idea to me. What are the dire concequences if we do not nuke the oil spill and how will it stop it?
It will make the sea bed and surrounding area for miles around radioactive for years.
Is this really such a threatening thing such as an asteriod or a doomsday scenerio? Can't we just move all life away from the immediate area and contain it somehow by putting barriers around it?
Didn't many people involved in figuring this out go to college and learn crtical thinking skills that were job apporaite?
Sure maybe someone like me who is a pscyhology major would not know how to fix but don't they?
If the government takes charge with their bought and paid for IVY league educations will they know what to do either?

reply to post by leo123


Sealing an underwater oil leak with a Nuke has NEVER been done.

This would be a FIRST.

That's just what we need - a nuclear EXPERIMENT 100 miles from heavily populated areas.




[edit on 30-5-2010 by FearNoEvil]

ISnt the national guard or fema down south already? thought i read that here.. if so perhaps they have made up thier minds, and are intending on nuking it, hence forth the supposed real reason for an evacutation. maybe...
maybe they should sned a dig arm or something down the hole..re digg channels off the side of the actual oil hole, digging out new empty holes that oil rushing up can/will flow into?

A couple of glaring what ifs to using a nuke.
First, what if the problem was caused by cracked strata allowing oil to bypass the well? we only see the well head but are hearing of "other" releases from seafloor cracks.
Would detonating a nuke in this weak sedimentary rock actually seal the hole or fracture the strata and allow more oil and gas free?

Second, a nuke will release a massive amount of heat in an area known for methane clathrate deposits.
IMO it was the hot subsurface oil and gas which released a large methane burp that destroyed the well.
A nuclear device has a high likelihood of causing a huge methane release. It only takes just a few degrees to cause the clathrate to come out of it's matrix and expand a couple thousand times.

In the wake of these observations a nuclear device is NOT an appropriate response. If any explosive shut down is considered I would hope it is with conventional explosives. If the well goes catastrophic due to the effort it would be much better if the oil and gas resulting is not radioactive.

It is very important to remember this area is a semi porous sedimentary rock from the Mississippi delta and layers of salt deposit capped by methane clathrate deposits of unknown depth. It is brittle, soft and porous and covered in an explosive gas ( rapid expansion = explosive even minus combustion).
It was hubris and urgency which put us here, let's not make the same attitude our down fall in dealing with this monstrosity.

Again the explosive option may be the only one left but at this point it needs to be well considered to not cause a larger problem than we already have.
A release of some facts about the geology would be a great start.

Finally if there are ocean floor cracks leaking and not just the well a nuke is the last thing we want. The thing is we are armchairing the problem with only a portion of the info.
Has anyone considered that the ban on drilling is due to a larger instability of the gulf floor?. Given the geology I know of the area it not only seems likely but quite probable.
I have stated that massive methane releases have caused extinction events and mass die offs in the past. We may not be on the verge of such a dramatic end but we are on a fast track to poison the earth for a period long enough to depopulate much of it.
N.

I put this on Top Kill Fail Thread...But why not a Bunker Buster Bomb Buried near the hole...Blow it and HOPEFULLY relocate enough material to collapse the Hole in on itself?

reply to post by N.of norml


If this is true then someone needs to warn the people considering the nuking. Is there a way to pass along information on the hazards and dangers to those in charge somehow?
Would it matter? Would they listen?

Do not need to use nukes use this method and solve the leak

problem.


Take an old large submarine the Navy does not use and weld or strap

it to the bottom of the sub a rectangular metal box the length and

width of the sub and then position it above where the Horizon blow

out is taking place.


Piloted by a small crew lower the heavy sub slowly on top of

the blowout pressure streams and then park the sub sealing off the

leak. The sub is very heavy plus heated and pressurized plus is apt

not to freeze like the domes that have been tried before. This will buy

time before the other slant hole is drilled deep into the existing

blowout hole.


Docked on the top of the subs hatch a tiny 2 or 3 man sub to escape

from the parked sub over the blowout holes. ^Y^


[edit on 30-5-2010 by amari]

Are they nuts? NUKES????

Cool down. It's only a 5ft diameter hole.

Below is perhaps how it could be done, simply explained, using ROV subs with the necessary calculated amount of tnt explosives to create rock debris.

If drilling holes would take days we do not have, then we will need to 'peel' the surface surrounding the hole of sand and solid rocks to make the debris cover up the hole, step by step, until the hole is enlarged and enough solid debris can weigh down the pressurised oil shooting out.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ab5cd248fa25.jpg[/atsimg]

Apparently they don't teach physics in school anymore...

If the well was at the surface this wouldn't even be news anymore. The expertise for killing blown out land-based wells has been around for decades. Killing this one is hard to do because of where it is.

The fact that the problem is in 5,000 foot of water, on the edge of a steep drop off into the Florida Plain, complicates the effort to kill the well. The fact that the pipe is still in place complicates the effort to kill the well.

Lets go with an extreme hypothetical case and assume that the nuke option is a great idea which it isn't. They can't even cut the pipe off and weld on a tree so they can simply close a valve, exactly how do the nuke proponents think that they can cut the pipe off and stuff a nuke into it? Even the so called tactical nukes are much, much bigger than the diameter of the well bore at the depths that have been discussed. Aside from being an incredibly dumb idea... it's not technically feasible.

Someone said that the formation contained an unusually high amount of methane. No it doesn't. Typically gas and oil wells that flow on their own are in the 85% - 90% range for methane concentration. That's what natural gas is. The heavier components make up the total but methane is the dominant component. Have you ever seen the wells with pump jacks on them? They look like some kind of horse bobbing it's head up and down. Do you know what those are? Those are called "oil wells" and the pump jack is moving a long rod connected to a bottom hole pump. The pump jack is the pumps power source. Do you know why there is a pump down hole? It's because "oil wells", as in those that produce a lot of oil and not much natural gas, don't have enough pressure to push the oil to the surface in sufficient quantities. Sometimes they don't have enough pressure to move any oil to the surface. The gulf produces natural gas and oil is a by product of producing those wells. Because the leak is in 5,000' of water the pressure is high enough and the temperature is low enough that the heavier components of natural gas are being liquefied. Add the Joule Thomson effect to the situation and the stream leaving the openings in the pipe is behaving as if it is in a processing plant. That means the natural gas stream is being liquefied to a greater degree than if it was an open hole to the atmosphere at the surface. The net result, imho, is a stream of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that is stratifying in the depths. As it warms up, the lighter components will rise, eventually reaching the surface. Some heavier components will rise with it and the sheen that we've been hearing about will appear who knows where. Maybe the Atlantic. A lot of it is going to sink to the bottom and unless it hits a volcanic ridge, that's where it will likely stay. Then of course there's the effects of hurricanes... who knows what that's going to do.

Everyone keeps comparing this to the Exxon Valdez. It's not anything like the Valdez disaster. The Valdez dumped a huge amount of oil onto the surface of a pristine natural bay and the surrounding landscape. Then people rushed to "solve the problem" and exacerbated the problem to the degree that all these years they are still suffering from the affects of the spill.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


That is more rational than nuking the well but I fear the light weight carbonate rock would not hold against the pressure in the amounts generated by explosives.
The "cap" of strata over the oil reservoirs is barely containing the hydrocarbons as it is. That and deep salt deposits are being leached forming a Swiss cheese consistency to the strata, from the above link.
"Alaminos Canyon Block 601"
"The northernmost and smaller feature was investigated with Alvin in 2006. A previous MMS-sponsored ROV survey in 2005 found that the feature was a brine lake. The Alvin dive of 2006 allowed us to determine the dimensions of the lake, surrounding benthic communities and the origin of white ‘flocs’ floating in the brine as well as accumulated on the ‘shoreline’. The brine lake was found to be in water 2,334m deep, with a diameter of approximately 180m and a general depth of about 4m. Analysis of the brine indicated that it was nearly three times (~90% salinity) the salinity of normal seawater. The white material floating in the brine and precipitation on the lake bottom (see Figure 2) was found to be barite.4 No living organisms were found in the lake, but limited communities were observed and sampled around the lake margin. These communities consisted primarily of mussels and heart urchins. Authigenic carbonates were limited to very localised hardgrounds. High methane concentrations were observed in the sediments surrounding the lake and in the water column above the lake.4 In 2007, observation and sampling of the broad circular expulsion feature to the south verified the occurrence of fluidised mud and brine and extensive mussel beds."

This makes it apparent that the whole continental shelf area is extremely unstable and porous. This fact makes the notion of nuclear disruption of the strata a dangerous course. Indeed the damage may already be irreparable and on a course of destruction regardless of any human intervention at this point.

The fact we are being spoon fed drek and bull crap by "official info sources'
has not kept some of us from researching the problem from a geological perspective rather than an economic one. The geologic implications make the economic ones look like the monkey games that precipitated this event.

Time to get with that economics are out the window now and this is a planetary event. Money means nothing at this point in regards to this event.
It is on a par with an asteroidal impact or super-volcano.
N.

I don't know about this,supposedly they knew what they were doing when they started drilling,now look at scenario!,who's to say setting off a nucleur device may not even have far worse damage,and radio active fall out too,boy I wish me had a leader in office

I don't know why this nuke concept is such a big deal, the Russians have been doing it for years with their offshore oil leaks.

www.oil-price.net...

Some people fear that a nuclear explosion would set the oil spill on fire. But Soviet Russia has used subterranean nuclear blasts as much as 169 times and the number would add up to more than 1,000 if all the tests by different countries are taken into account. And since the explosion would be underwater and in the absence of oxygen there is no chance of the well burning up.

And when the "nuke option" FAILS, then what? Not only would we add radiation to the mess of the oil spill and chemical dispersant, then we would have a huge friggin' hole in the ocean floor which would be a biohazard radiation zone which isn't exactly safe to work in, so the problem would be impossible to tackle.

WORST. IDEA. EVER.

[edit on 30-5-2010 by harrytuttle]

double post look below.

[edit on 30-5-2010 by dreamseeker]

reply to post by john124


There are much smaller missiles than nukes

According to this web site there is an 80% chance it would not work: www.huffingtonpost.com...: "that the probability a nuke detonated a mile under the gulf would seal the Deepwater Horizon leak is perhaps 20 percent."

Besides how do we know we can trust the Russians; what if it is all just proganda?

Good bye environment, good bye Gulf of Mexico, good bye large parts of the US southeastern coast, good bye reason and responsibility, was nice knowing y all.

Good bye gulf stream, good bye everything thats beeing affected by the latter.

Earth WILL retaliate if its near something like a living organism. Nothing lets this happen to oneself without defending itself.

Looks like TBTB are going to get their depopulation after all.

Whatever is going to be done about this, its going to hurt a lot of humans and everything else alive on this planet.

My friend lives in Flordia. I told him about this and he didn't seem concerned? Why are some people so complactent?

reply to post by leo123

Think real hard about what is being suggested with "nuking" the oil spill drill site, then go away.