The scientists may be from 'the complex' (the U.S. DOE nuclear weapons complex), but they were sent to employ their overall science, and engineering critical thinking skills, not to contemplate employing a nuclear device on the BP out-of-control well.

The U.S. national labs, such as Sandia National Labs, conduct a considerable amount of research (and development) which has nothing to do with nuclear explosive devices. Directed energy, conventional explosives, many other areas.

In my estimation, the probability of the U.S. government employing a nuclear explosive device to seal this, or any, well is Zero.

The engineering, safety, and security challenges are legion.

Even if this idea was selected to pursue, in my estimation we would have five relief wells connected to the bottom of the problem well before the preliminary engineering estimate was accomplished for this nuclear bomb idea.

The folks who think we can just pull one of these existing devices off the shelf and lower it down a shaft do not know the first thing about the complexities involved.

I laugh even louder when folks blithely write that we can just whip up a custom-made device in some incredibly brief time and employ it.

I will not enumerate the technical challenges involved, that is above everyone's' pay grade here.

Speculation about using a nuclear explosive device to close this well is not in the realm of productive brain storming, but squarely in the realm of techno-fantasy and fiction.

I would wager all my net worth that this idea was mooted once to the President, the details describing why this never will be done were discussed, and the idea was never, and will never, be mooted again in official U.S. government circles.

Rest easy Galen and others: This idea was never seriously considered by the adults who have the authority over these matters. Nor will this idea ever be seriously considered.

The World wrt special weapons has changed in the last twenty years. What was done in the past is NOT a template for what can be considered now.

Not...gonna...happen.

The whole "bomb baby bomb" stuff is just weird - demand for instant gratification and revenge on/assurance of control over nature I guess.

(1) Bombing the well externally will not work.
Nor will building a pile of rubble over the top:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6533#comment-635142

It would take several miles high pile of rubble to resist the pressure.
Then one has to get a pressure tight seal - no way to do this.
This is not a leaking garden hose, this is on the order of 10,000 psi (680 atmospheres) of pressure.

(2) So, to be able to seal the thing, one must drill down to very near the reservoir.

Given that we have the technology to intersect well bores reasonably quickly,
and that bottom kills from intersections have always (eventually) worked,
no need to waste time on things that won't work.

http://www.jwco.com/technical-litterature/p11.htm
http://www.vectormagnetics.com/Relief%20Well%20Services.htm

ps - live cam now showing sawing of things off riser bend. (11:20 CST)

The Mark 48 torpedo has a diameter of 21", so the conventional warhead is less than 21". The warhead has an explosive energy equivalent to about 1200 pounds of TNT. Weather or not it can withstand the temps/pressures of a relief well is another question. How to detonate one (or more) at depth is another question. Use the steel casing to transmit a signal, perhaps. The casing would have to be plugged prior to detonation lest it become a cannon or create a new passage for the oil to exit the formation.

There is a lot of "geology" between the sediment layer and the formation to play with. The relief wells are going deep and have to precisly intersect the casing,,,very time consuming. A shallower well higher up that only needs to get within a few feet may save a lot of time. Pack a few of these warheads next to the casing and attempt to collaspe the well around the midpoint of the bore. Desperate times......Explosives don't just blow things up. They are precision tools for accomplishing work quickly.

The nuke idea is crazy overkill, IMO, but some things to keep in mind:

Modern nuclear devices are much cleaner and more efficient.

This is a very deep well, with a mile of water on top of it.

Many things could go wrong, yet BP has a pretty good picture of the geology.

A lot is known about the effects of subsurface/subterranian nuclear blasts.

There will be one less nuke on the planet.

If they can't stop or greatly reduce the flow of this well, the PTB will be getting more desperate.

(disclaimer: mostly speculation from a generalist)

Thad Allen (Press Conference on June 01), and Robert Gibbs (the same), both mentioned uncertainty about the condition of the well bore, and whether it was damaged during the blowout and explosion of gas on the rig. This seems to be a new concern (since nobody mentioned it before), and may be the result of new data from the failed "top kill" procedure.

The bloke is an investment banker. I guess he might know a bit about creating a disastrous volume of toxic stuff in his own line of work, but why the hell is anyone listening to him?

He's right. Russia is the only place where I've seen construction workers carry a ruddy great axe as standard, even if they're only installing HVAC units.

From the Pravda article referenced: The two giant flames were extinguished with the help of nuclear explosions. They drilled two wells to approach the emergency wells under the ground and lowered nuclear devices into the wells. The troubled wells were blocked as a result of the explosions.

The work was extremely hard, but it was worth it. I took direct participation in the experiment and was personally present there during the explosions. The experiment was a success. The exploitation of the Pamuk oil well was launched again and nothing could remind of the disaster which had been liquidated with the help of nuclear explosions.

The first explosions to shut off a gas well by the Russians were in the mid 60's; about 45 years ago. What have been the **actual** results?

Did the wells stop flowing altogether or is there still some leakage?

Were there radiation leaks ? If so how much, for how long?

Did the wells resume flowing after a time?

Were there any failures? What were the consequences?

The environmental diaster in the Gulf is real and needs to be stopped. What are possible solutions? It appears that use of a nuclear weapon is a possibility. What are its consequences -- physically; short term and long term?

Peter

I say nuke it. We're Americans. We shoot and blow up things to fix situations. How can we face our grandfathers knowing the Russians had the sack to do this.

Are you feelin' lucky you punk well? Go ahead, make our day.

Well, on 2nd thought...

"The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so"

So Oppenheimer is suggesting that the world will be OK and it will not go to hell if we do not attempt to prevent it. but
If we attempt to prevent it then it will go to hell.

This makes sense considering that the 'world' and 'hell' are both man made and that the world and earth are two seperate entities.

Mother Earth does not deserve this assault or does Mother Earth equally love her toxin loaded deep hydrocarbon based gue as equal as she does a new born baby or sprouted seedling of any species?

[new] greenish on May 31, 2010 - 11:51am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top Two more relief wells. That's what to push for. Now. Publicly. Much more likely to shave time off the spill and mitigate the damage. Utterly no reason not to.

Care to elaborate how this will save time?

But then what the hell, BP's buying, lets back up, what 3 or 4 more big drill ships,
and go to work. Might as well since most of the Gulf seems to be shut down now in the deepwater drilling dept.
Got to keep the idle rigs working somewhere, don't we? Might as well be drilling more relief wells, even if it is just for jollies at about a half a mill/day each.
Punish BP good for what they did.

I think it's "Nuke the Baby Whales"
Has a little more bite.

As for engineering issues and time-scales, I wonder how long it would take to design, build and launch an nuclear rocket to deal with an incoming asteroid? Nobody would be whining that 'It can't be done' ... they WOULD make sure it WAS done .. or (literally) die trying.

Now this is something I have seen discussed before in other venues, however, what you wind up with, instead of just one chunk of rock flying at you, you get to have several. But it is a lot more spectacular in the end.

Given that apparently way to deal with an asteroid is to nudge it off course without fracturing it (anything else is requires much, much more energy) which requires much more finesse than any previous deployments, so I think it's pretty clear no-one doing engineering would say it'd be feasible to do the all the development only once you've discovered an oncoming asteroid. Sometimes there's a limit to what a POSITIVE MENTAL ATITUDE can acheive.

If one really thinks nuclear is important for solving these sort of problems, one ought to be doing the experimental groundwork now so nuclear explosives can be used on the next undersea drilling disaster that will happen.

Oh for crying out loud, the safety engineering and analysis alone would take years.

Believe me.

Gotta put the burgers on the grill...

It is far more than political challenges...

The anti-nuclear spasm is quite absurd. These people are worried about radiation from a low yield device detonated thousands of feet under the GOM seafloor (where there is rock and it is sufficiently deep to form a seal) but say nothing about the thousands of varieties of carcinogens spewed along with the oil. The chemical carcinogens are no less of a threat than any ground level release of radioactive cesium and strontium and they will be in the system for decades.

The only legitimate concern is that the low yield device does fractures the bedrock too much making the well permanently unsealable. But this would mean that there was way too much force applied to the problem. This is an engineering problem and we have the data on the rock strata.

calling international rescue

"would / could a nuclear class explosion disrupt / 'break' / or / otherwise set into motion some structural geological event?"

Other than the probable tsunami? Would that count as a geological event or just a disaster?

Looks like you should be in charge of this operation. Make sure you take the model that's designed to plow through hundreds of feet of muck and mud on its way to the point in the rock where fracturing is guaranteed not to occur. I think it's model# 2stupid4words.

Check with the Chinese first: they'll have a better price.

Does anyone else think that the geniuses promoting this nonsense are holding BP stock? And are looking for a way to shift liability from BP to someone, anyone, else.

Man o' man, I am glad that adults are minding the store.

Hmmm, any naval experience to back that up? The USN has not deployed nuclear warheads for ASW for over 20 years -- all ASROCs are retired and the replacement vertical launch VL-ASROC is conventional only.

The other issue here is that ASROC was not designed to operate below some depth, which I guess is still classified. (If anyone has an unclassified source, I'd like to see it.) I would personally be dubious of any depth below the crush depth of a Soviet Alfa...which is way less than the depth of the well.

Let's ignore the pressure and depth issues for a moment. The W44 warhead fits into a 13.75 inch missile, but I don't know that it could be sized to fit into the 9-7/8" pipe at the bottom. No personal knowledge, just opinion. So I think a separate well is still mandatory.

A standard joke about nuclear ASW weapons is that they have the highest kill probability of any weapon in the arsenal, 2.0 - they sink both the sub and the ship that fired them.

There may be some other warhead with a smaller diameter, but it will not be optimized for underwater use.

The relief well still sounds like the best option if the ongoing efforts to stop or capture the leak on the sea bed do not eventually yield some success. But that's a separate debate.

Let me guess...do you use your Vice Grips to pound nails?

Put pennies in the fuze box?

Forget this 'off the shelf' idea...Attention K-Mart shoppers, we are running a Blue-Light Special on nuclear demolition devices in the Yard and Garden section...on sale, no warranties expressed or implied...no refunds or rain checks...

Dave,

Prior to circa 1992 it was a different World wrt to your question.

After then it would be and is a big fraking hairy deal.

Why isn't the media taping into that resource to discuss the problem/solution sets?

Dave, get yourself into a laboratory quickly. Enquiring minds want to know how a guy born yesterday has managed to master language in one day.

When I take a break from pulling out my hair I'll pick up my jaw, so I can gnash my teeth: I'm hearing a guy on BBC radio news (Christopher Brownfield of Colombia Univ) assert, with cheerful confidence, that using a nuclear bomb to stop this blowout WOULD work, and that the main reason that this "solution" is being resisted is to preserve BP's opportunity to eventually profit from this well. He did allow that using "an array of conventional explosives on the ocean floor" (ON?) might be preferable to using nukes. He mainly seemed anxious to bomb the whole mess to smithereens just to make sure that BP could never make a dollar selling this oil. (My mother used to call this "cutting off your nose to spite your face.") It certainly would be emotionally satisfying to send a nuke in BP's direction, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

The BBC presenter expressed little skepticism; no contrary opinion was presented.

I'll leave all the technical objections to you experts. What appalls me is the irresponsible journalism. A few days ago, the NYT (et al) told us that the leak (such a puny little word for such a monstrous event) was stopped, and we just had to wait a few days to see if the cement would hold. Few people seemed to care much or notice that this "information" had not the slightest acquaintance with reality. Further erosion of media credibility will be another consequence of this blowout. When the media finally start talking about peak oil, people won't believe a word.

Some questions:
1. Could a relief well be used for production later? I did read in a comment on another thread that it definitely could not, but I don't understand the details.
2. Why is this thread listed under "Australia and New Zealand"?
3. What's a smithereen?

THANKS for great site--sending $.

From the textbooks I have seen, Petroleum Engineering is about memorizing a bunch of formulas. Very few PE departments exist in major universities away from oil producing regions in the USA. In some sense they may work better as trade schools.

I try to rationalize why this occurs in the context of them doing no research on oil depletion, or any real fundamental research. Like this on dispersion:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/05/word-on-dispersion.html

Try a geophysics department or an environmental engineering department.

In the case of a miss the procedure is to backup a short length (involves cementing etc.) and trying again. As you say intersection will eventually occur - but the time line may be longer than BP is telling us right now.

The real problems may occur when the relief intersects. There are some unknowns and care needs to be taken.

GPS won't work underground.

So they use gyros and other things for directional drilling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWD_%28measurement_while_drilling%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_Steerable_Systems

This stuff is done all the time now.
It's what makes the shale gas plays possible - long horizontal wells (with fracturing).

For final approach to the blown-out well's casing, they'll use
some electromagnetic sensing systems.
http://www.jwco.com/technical-litterature/p11.htm
http://www.vectormagnetics.com/Relief%20Well%20Services.htm

"I look forward to the TOD getting back to normal."

+1

I found otherwise. They considered and responded to my questions and politely referred me back to a prior thread which I should have read before posting. Very good of them too.
They don't mind newbies so much as idiots that a) can't be bothered to read (*cough*) and b) don't recognise that the extra three zeroes at the end of a number actually change things just a bit.
It's the same with me in my own field. I get narked by fools who will loudly opine on X without feeling the need to get a clue first. Only they were nicer than I'd be (although if someone does try and still gets it wrong I'm more than happy with that).
Separately, someone mentioned landslides. FWIW it brough this to mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_slide.
I appreciate your answers, gents, time for me to sign off permanently I think. Best of luck.

The responses to the nonsense posts have been pretty restrained. How many times would you have to explain that attaching a battleship to a giant brass screw using JB Weld and then sinking it directly on the borehole is not a practical solution. Or the suggestion that a number of large ships begin processing the water in the GOM plumes to remove the entrained oil molecules. It makes as much sense as calling for fans to be set up on the beaches to blow the slick back out to sea. But, as one commentator wrote "At least they could try" which is just nonsense.

MetaMeme--

You have no right to complain:

TOD is a reality-based, technically oriented blog.

If you have questions ask them--knowledgeable people will often notice your post and answer your questions.

If, instead, you refuse to read and learn but merely promote blatantly stupid ideas, then of course you will be slapped down--that is as it should be!

Honestly I don't have the time to look at the Oil Spill threads so I can't say one way or another how new people to the Site are being treated. I am one of the old timers, in August it'll be 5 years. I try to be polite and civil to people who might not understand that their idea is not going to work. But I rarely stand for people being rude to others, and tend to post something about it, ( happened in the recent Campfire keypost thread ).

I would hope that everyone takes a calm deep breath and tries to be calm in thier dealings with new and old alike.

I too would like the traffic to slow down a bit, but I don't think we can hope for that until the sensory overload kicks in with the Spill news, or the spill ends.

I know that the people who are in the area of the spill are the hottest about the issues facing them, And to them I'd like to offer a big hug and a beer (You'll have to email me to arrange that one)

Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed future.

"curious about the mechanics of drilling a relief well. If you don't hit the original well the first time do you have to drill a completely new well to try again or do you back it up a bit and try again. So on the next try you only have to drill several hundred feet. If so why wouldn't you ultimately be guaranteed success?"

It might take a half dozen tries, but they will hit eventually.

The reason it might not be a success is that according to what I read elsewhere ( and I thought the person got their info here but I might be wrong) there is evidence that the casing failed at the bottom and so there is oil and gas coming up outside the pipe as well as inside the pipe. I don't know much about plugging holes down there with cement, but if there is a hole opened up in the reservoir rock cap outside the pipe, this is why a bomb to crimp the rock and pipe shut would be the only answer. You can't cement a hole in the rock.

If the experts here would like to correct me, please do, it is hard to know what is true in all the internet supposed facts being tossed around.

By the way we have a fallout shelter,and I read all 800 pages of Richard Rhoads book on the Making of the Atomic Bomb (fantastic read) and his second book on the making of the thermonuclear bomb. One of my hobbies is civil defense. I have zero worries about a nuke down there and fully support Simmons. I think most people have an exaggerated fear of nukes as far as radiation from this goes...although if it did sublimate ( melt, but from solid to gas) methane hydrates, I can see that it might be apocalyptic.....

..and I don't think Simmons speaks from any dementia, but from wisdom and concern.....

The Soviets didn't just try using nukes to plug gas wells.

The rumor was 4 of 5 leaks were 'stopped' with nukes.

No idea of the truth.

If memory serves, the explosive charges were placed to put out the raging fires, the wildcatters then used other apparatus to cap the wells.

Traditionally explosives are used to extinguish well fires, not stopping the blow out. Bye the way, there were other -- more creative -- methods used in Kuwait, e.g. using set engine to blow out the fires as a candle. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/01q2/stilling_the_fires_of_war-feature

"Why would you need a nuke to do this job?"

You don't. This discussion is crazy. If someone proposes using nukes, they are crazy and in capable of hearing reasoned discourse. Read more here to see that this statement is true, or just take my word for it and move on.

Why would you need a nuke to do this job?

The impulse energy to move earth was the original proposal I remember reading - the idea was drill a hole, put a nuke down the hole and the BOOM would move the earth to close the hole.

There has been no confirmation of any other 'Leak points" than at the well site. A source of the confusion is that a research vessle reported a area of low oxygen in a plume some miles away. I believe the scientist who was quoted later made clear that he was not implicating the oil leak. The problem with this leak is that the oil that is escaping is alos full of dissolved NG. When the mix passes the escape point the pressure is reduced but only to about 2500 psia. Lots of unusual reactions occur as the gas comes out of solution and the hydrates are formed when the gas combines with the water. The various components of the oil are also fractionated. The result is far different from having dead oil on the surface as in the Exxon Valdez incident. I expect that there will be lots of reports from the different monitoring groups that they never expected XXXX or had not seen YYYY before.

If you read all of my comments above you would understand:

1. I think this is a crazy idea, I'm just participating in the discussion, trying to dispell some myths.

2. I suggested that conventional explosives would be the prefered choice.

3. I pointed out that all nuclear devices are not huge "city killers". The yield of the smallest nuke referenced, 72 tons (.072 kiloton), TNT equivalent, surely won't create the type of damage you suggest. We have used (combined yield) conventional weapons much larger.

I suggest you need to revisit the "problem of scale" question.

I don't take offense at your suggesting that I'm a crank. It seems I'm in good company here ;-)

Note that a nuke will instantly vaporize rock, mud, water anything else in the neighborhood.

Beyond the obvious heat of a fission reaction - how big are you thinking the explosion would be and where?

It doesn't work that way. That would imply a chain reaction. Neither the ocean nor the atmosphere contain any material in sufficient quantities to sustain a chain reaction.

In Operation Crossroads two roughly Hiroshima sized weapons (duplicates of the Fat Man bomb) were detonated in the Bikini atoll testing area to see the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships. The Alpha test was an airburst at 528 feet, and the Bravo test was detonated at 90 m below sea level, not at sea level.

They stopped the program not because of a difference in the yield of the underwater explosion and the airburst, which were essentially the same, but because the ships in the Bravo test became very highly radioactive and virtually impossible to clean. An airburst disperses fallout over a huge area so that the effects are to some extent mitigated. But an explosion below but near the surface produces localized radioactive fallout, whose effects are considerably worse.

About #3, Worried: IIRC, the Saudi spill was much shallower and most of the oil was sufacing in a small area. This deepwater GOM spill is different in that the oil that is reaching the surface is doing so over a large area. Much of it isn't rising to the surface at all.....yet.

Wow, this post was bound to lead to some crazy threads and it did. Someone said that those who know the most about nuclear weapons are the most set against it. I haven't seen any substantiation that anyone posting here is an expert, nuclear physicist, etc., nor have I seen any posts that lead me to believe they are. Too bad. Very few links to substantiate some of your claims. I was hoping for some posts/links regarding (general info) the possible peaceful uses of these devices. I understand that it is a "no starter" subject, and the likelyhood of one being used on this spill is near to zero. So is the likelyhood of humans settling on a planet around some other star in the foreseeable future. We still discuss it. What gives?

I admire the passion of some of you who object to this "proposal". I detest any suggestion that it shouldn't be discussed. Very un-TOD.

This has been an enjoyable exercise. Thanks all!

Please try to listen to the video more carefully, and understand why your comment (repeated so, so many times above) doesn't make sense. The Soviets chose a plastic strata to detonate in, not a brittle one. They mention this. A plastic media will deform under stress rather than fracture. Are there plastic strata in the seabed at any depth between the seafloor and the reservoir top depth, and if so, is one of them deep enough to sufficiently contain the stress produced by the explosion without creating any other channels? Only some competent geologists with specific area knowledge should answer this.

Hell, we can't control the crust on bread.

Man, that's a big hole!

"the effects of nuclear explosions underground or underwater are VERY limited" <- this is a good thing and works against the idea of not using it.

"so you have to be VERY close to what you want to zap." <- No problem, the technology to drill "VERY" close exists. By VERY I assume you mean within, say 50 meters.

I have to say that Ghung's posts are the most scientific that I have read here.

Lot of unscientific ranting, all the way from "the Earth will split open", to "this is top secret stuff and I can write about it being top secret on the internet, but you should not even be thinking about it". Hmmmm... is that a black helicopter I see outside my window?

I think those who oppose the nuclear solution do so for emotional reasons. Sure there may be the risk of the release of some radiation. It is also quite likely that the radiation will not even have 0.01% negative impact that the unsealed well is having. This is pretty much the anti-nuclear religion.

It is easy to be sitting comfortably in some faraway city and proclaim the nuclear option should not be tried, however for the people in Louisiana who are going to suffer the consequences it is a different story.