The Gulf (of Mexico) oil spill continues, about a month on with no certainty of a solution on the horizon. At press time (ha!) they were about to try to jam it full of high-pressure mud to stop it, with a probability of success in the 60-70% range. I am certainly no expert, but when they can't get the job done, perhaps something a bit more extreme could do the job.
I say, it's a mile underwater, drop a small nuke on the leak. It's a 1950's style solution from back when they though you could do all sorts of engineering with A-bombs. It was in many ways a more forward-looking time than our own, at least for the tech stuff. I still don't have my flying car, but for that all of us should be thankful; on the scale of general calamity I will argue that millions of flying cars is more of a threat to life and limb than a bit of fission excavation would be.
Case against: "It's a NUKE, for chissakes, the fish will all glow and Godzilla will come and finish off The Big Easy!" I'm sure there might be some more nuance, but the general tone and level of "science" would be in this league I suspect.
Case for: It's in over 5000' of seawater, and a bomb of the size that might seal that leak (10kT? Smallish tac nuke anyway) will do a lot less environmental damage than all of that oil coming out will.
In any event, it's a sign of the times that this isn't even suggested. We are far more afraid of anything nuclear than we are of, well, pretty much anything else. The Yanks probably still have a few ASROC kicking around, although I suspect a bit more payload is in order. You could bundle this in with a nuclear test to validate your computer sims and solve two problems at once. Even without the testing of a new design, you'd still get a "twofer" by writing off an old bomb you had to dismantle for the new treaty anyway.
The bottom line here is: Stupidity gets us into things, why can't it get us out? Even more basic than that, I'd REALLY like someone to convince me that my proposal couldn't have settled this problem a lot faster and cleaner than whatever finally does. There's the gauntlet...
2 comments:
stupidity gets us into things, more stupidity gets us into more stupid things.
I'm not really opposed to nukes but trying random stuff when you're in deep trouble is a recipe for digging yourself deeper. The presence of clathrates is concerning and could lead to further problems.
I realize that I lack the expertise to refute your concern about the methane crystals, but my "gut" tells me that the ~2000ATM of pressure at the depth in question would tamp the blast well to start with. I also can't come up with how you would generate a secondary explosion with the calthrates under those circumstances, and if you did if you would even notice it after setting off even a smallish nuke. It's a question of some immediate damage (radiation and shock to sea life, turbidity, etc.) in the immediate area vs. weeks or months of crude spilling out into the Gulf.
Additionally, I used "stupidity" facetiously here; a calculated risk, even if it seems radical is neither random nor actually stupid. I do like being challenged on things though...
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