That there oil spill....

[Darrenb209]

Thats always a good thing

depends, if you live in the florida area, it's a bad thing, for the rest of the world though, CELEBRATION TIME

[WN1 Hit]

That is true. It could have been that the Russians executed it way out to sea to avoid a nuclear fallout, as well as a tsunami, or at a minimum, very very large waves.

and for how many times it's been done:

5 times, worked 4 times.

Dunno about that fact though.

In my books, 2 times. Cold War, Now this.

[acer5200]

Here's a gallery of the current situation:

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-G...ure/(photo)/55

5 times, worked 4 times.

What happened the time it didn't work?

[Arathorn136]

heres an article...

"Stop the presses~! The Russians have come up with a pretty snazzy way to deal with that oil spill: nuke it all! Why waste time freaking out when you can unleash the power of mass-to-energy conversion, and let Mr. Atom clean up the mess in no time at all?

The silly thing is, while I?m half-joking, the Russians are legitimately serious about the proposal. Turns out they used to do such a thing?nuke oil spills?back in the days of the Soviet Union.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the country?s best-selling daily newspaper (sorta like their USA Today, I guess), suggests that we nuclear bomb the area near the leak, with ?the underground explosion mov[ing] the rock, press[ing] on it, and, in essence, squeez[ing] the well?s channel.?

They?ve done such a thing five times in the past, and it turns out that it has an 80 percent "

[pialpha]

You forget that you can shape charges. All they would be doing is collapsing the pipe in on itself, and shifting the surrounding bedrock to fill the hole. I don't mean by nuke that we should just drop a nuclear bomb into the ocean, get out of the way and cross our fingers.

But you just have to look at Russia's success rate with this method. 80%. Isn't it work giving it a shot?

That is not actually what nuking it would do, the way nuking would work is the pressure and heat of the explosion to turn the bedrock into glass. Hopefully stopping the flow of oil.

[Arathorn136]

Heres an even better one:

Nukes, a simple proven method to stop oil leaks
A leading Russian daily has come up with another option-nuke the spill. Though it sounds more like fiction and somewhat outlandish, the fact is that Soviet Russia had used controlled nuclear explosions to contain oil spills, on at least five different occasions.

The science is to drill a hole near the leak, set off the explosion and then seal off the leak-used in the soviet for an oil spill in the desert. If it is rocky surface the explosion would shift the rock which then squeezes the funnel of the well. The first underground nuclear explosion was done in Urt-Bulak in 1966 to control burning gas wells. The success ratio is quite high with only one of them failing to prevent a spill in Kharkov region in 1972.

There is an analogy between using nukes to stop the oil leak and using Chemotherapy on a cancer patient. Chemo nearly kills the patient in order to kill all cancerous cells. Yet it is the best known way to stop cancer. The same goes with using nukes underwater. Like chemo it is drastic yet has a 80% success rate, better than anything else.


Some analysts are against the use of nuclear explosions on fear of the effects on the environment. But the world has already done underwater testing of nuclear devices and if there was a huge environmental disaster as a result of it, we'd have known by now. Indeed, Commandant Cousteau, renowned biologist led numerous dives following French underwater nuclear explosions in the Mururoa atoll and noted very little impact on sea life.
using nukes to stop the leak is the most ecological alternative. Stopping the leak before too much oil leak is the key, speed is of the essence. Nukes would allow this to be resolved in a matter of days. This would save thousands of miles of shoreline, millions of animals by not allowing this toxic sludge to contaminate the shore.
One of the main issues with using nukes is public opinion. Even though it's the most ecological alternative, nukes have a huge public stigma hard to overcome, mostly due to ignorance. Nuclear bombs are not intended to be used for peaceful, ecological purposes and educating the public on this possibility is an uphill battle.
This technology was used by the Russians, the USA's sworn enemy at the peak of the cold war. Never mind the relatively high success rate of 80%, no politician in his right mind would sell a Russian solution to the public.
Of course, BP does not have nukes. The US military does, of which the Army Corps of Engineers would probably have to design a plan to use them on the leak. The United States has about 5,113 nuclear war heads, as revealed by Pentagon according to the Strategic Arms Reduction purpose. So, why not use them for peaceful purpose for once?

[WN1 Hit]

Are you talking about regular oil spills, such as tank shipment, etc. The gulf oil spill came from a platform. The first time was in the cold war.

[LaoOmologo]

That is not actually what nuking it would do, the way nuking would work is the pressure and heat of the explosion to turn the bedrock into glass. Hopefully stopping the flow of oil.

Or creating a huge impact towards the gulf... we'll se...
(btw, nuke it)

[acer5200]

@Arathorn: That actually sounds like a good idea.

@Lao: Please, if you don't have anything constructive to say, leave the thread. Your posts are making you look more and more like an ignoramus than anything else. If you really want to post on this subject, please, get educated about it first.

[BrotherhoodUK]

Look, why don't we let the UK nuke it? After all, we made the mess, so we should clean it up and stop the flow.

Maybe a Trident'll give us a stopped leak.