Obama Sends Nuclear Experts To Tackle BP Oil Spill 389
An anonymous reader writes "The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the 'catastrophic' flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation. The five-man team — which includes a man who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 1950s — is the brainchild of Steven Chu, President Obama's Energy Secretary." Let's hope this doesn't mean they actually try the nuclear option. In other offshore drilling news, reader mygoditsfullofdoom informs us that a Venezuelan gas rig has sunk in the Caribbean (with no loss of life). This one is being laid at the feet of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, which hasn't exactly been regarded as uber-competent "after President Hugo Chavez fired half the company's managers and senior engineers following a 2002 strike."
Nuclear physicists? (Score:2, Interesting)
Has the oil industry become so corrupted that the only way to get a useful opinion is to recruit a team from a completely different field?
"Let's hope" (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm curious at the usage of the phrase "let's hope". A correctly placed nuclear device in the that seals off the oil as well as causing a collapsing void that traps any fission products generated sounds a lot better than pouring yet more megagallons of oil into the ocean.
(your milage may vary in practice a fair bit from theory of course)
yes, yes he could (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets face it, this is the US way. I remember countless jokes about the Mir space station that after years of faithful service was retired while the space shuttle was blowing up all over the place. When you can't be proud of your own stuff, ridicule what others do. It works.
The Venezuela incident seems without side effect so far, and the firing of all the engineers and directors? Well, BP didn't and that one blew up... so what is the relation? But no worry, logic has nothing to do with propaganda.
What do you expect from a country where fox-news is not a contradiction in terms?
Re:Obama is a genius!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
The Russians also thought that this [wikipedia.org] would work.
They don't exactly have a flawless track-record when it comes to this sort of thing.
Bad reporting (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear physicists? (Score:2, Interesting)
How is it that you translate the fact that no one has every tried to plug a leak like this in these depths to mean the oil industry is corrupted?
Or do you think BP's shareholders would be contempt with standing around and doing nothing while millions are wiped off the company's value?
Re:It's different when it's someone else! (Score:3, Interesting)
I see your crushing, err, Google search and raise you an article by Krugman on Reagan's legacy [nytimes.com].
Re:Obama is a genius!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
It may have a chance to work on land based situations, but it can also cause a major disaster.
In the mexican gulf there is a lot of hydrocarbons dissolved into the water, and there is a risk that you can get this "mint in a soda" effect if you are unlucky. And on a gigantic scale. In worst case it can be a termination event. It may not be that, but there is still a risk of a tsunami and other nasty things to happen if things goes wrong. Imagine New Orleans and a large area along the south coast of the US drowned again...
The fishing industry may be in deep trouble for decades due to this accident regardless.
Are they really trying to plug it up? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are they trying to plug the leak, or are they really trying to salvage the bore there and get back to pumping oil?
The reason I ask is..why not a chernobyl style containment effort. Drop a 200 (whatever, hugemongous, the biggest they can move) ton solid concrete and steel cube on that thing, then add to it, until the leak totally stops. The first big chunk would smash the pipe flat, effectively sealing it.
It has looked to me right along as more an effort to salvage what they did so far, not actually just plug it up.
Re:Bad reporting (Score:4, Interesting)
After an explosion in 2005 killed five workers at PDVSA's 955,000 barrel per day Paraguana Refining Complex -- one of the biggest refinery complexes in the world -- the manager conceded that the frequency of fires, blasts and oil leaks had almost doubled compared with the previous year.
Not good.
Re:Bad reporting (Score:4, Interesting)
And the Texas City refinery explosion also happened that same year and killed 15.
Neither BP nor PDVSA look to be doing a great job.
Re:Hay for Cleanup? (Score:4, Interesting)
he put no more than 1/20th of a gallon of oil into that container and said it took 1 pound of hay to clean that up.
The explosion and resulting leak happened 25 days ago.
It's been leaking about 50k barrels per day according to recent (non-computer scientists) estimates.
At that rate, it's going to require ~525,000 tons of hay.
According to a quick search for some kind of US hay production values, in 2008 we produced about 145,000,000 tons in 2008
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Missouri/Publications/Brochures/Hay_Facts.pdf [usda.gov]
Although noting is said about how much of that was used to feed livestock. However I suspect that it was most of it.
So this would be less than half a percent of the US annual hay production. That doesn't seem completely unrealistic to me. Difficult and our infrastructure is likely not set up for this kind of thing, sure, but not flat out unrealistic from some 10 minutes worth of estimating. Add in other realistic aspects of the situation however, and things could get out of control pretty easily, but I would at least say this warrants further exploration of this idea.
Re:why not nuclear? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm not an expert but (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that there are at least two things that might make using nuclear bomb difficult in this case:
1) Water pressure is high because the sea is so deep. Ordinary nuclear device probably won't work at that kind of pressure and needs thick protective case, which makes the diameter of the bomb even larger.
2) In order to prevent radioactive leak, the bomb should be detonated deep underground. But it is not easy to dig several hundreds of meters deep well, when the sea depth is 1.5 kilometers. They could use oil drilling equipment to do this, but even that would take some time and the diameter of the well might not be enough for the nuclear device.
Re:It's different when it's someone else! (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way, Volker was appointed by Carter, and attacked inflation pretty aggressively. As a consequence,, unemployment worsened and we had a recession. Still, he stuck to his guns and Reagan benefited when inflation was subdued and the inevitable recovery happened about two or three years into Reagan's first term.
Re:It's different when it's someone else! (Score:2, Interesting)
"Reagan made sure experienced AC's were in place so safety was maintained."
Oh REALLY ?
I was almost killed during that period, when an incompetent controller cleared two aircraft to
land on the same runway AT THE SAME TIME. I was flying one of those two aircraft, and
because I WAS paying attention, several people weren't killed in a midair collision.
You obviously are not a pilot. And you don't know what the fuck you are writing about
when you write that Reagan "made sure experienced AC's were in place so safety was maintained".
SHUT THE FUCK UP and quit spewing bullshit when you have no real knowledge of the subject,
you ignorant cocksucker.