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The Russian idea for fixing oil leaks- nuclear bomb the oil well!

Should we drop a nuclear bomb on the leaky oil well? Washington Examiner, By: Mark Hemingway,  05/04/10 Apparently that’s what the Russians have done in similar circumstances:Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground.

The idea is simple, KP writes: “the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.”Yes! It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966 with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers. KP also notes that subterranean nuclear blasts were used as much as 169 times in the Soviet Union to accomplish fairly mundane tasks like creating underground storage spaces for gas or building canals. Should we drop a nuclear bomb on the leaky oil well? | Washington Examiner

May 5, 2010 - Posted by | Russia, safety | , ,

3 Comments »

  1. In a low lying area like the Gulf of Mexico, a nuclear blast of this magnitude would likely cause a tsunami and death on a massive scale. Please leave nukes to the last century where they belong.

    RonFrumAmaireeka's avatar Comment by RonFrumAmaireeka | May 25, 2010 | Reply

  2. For one, they do not need to use the biggest nuke sitting around, as for the fish, if its going to take another two months to cap it, I think they are probably gone anyway.

    Tom Saltsman's avatar Comment by Tom Saltsman | May 28, 2010 | Reply

  3. I’m amazed that anyone could seriously suggest this “nuclear solution” to the oil leak.

    For one thing – who is trusting the “Russian ideas” – when it is well known that the Russian track record for nuclear safety is terrible.

    This is a fine example of a “Problem-multiplying solution”.
    What is needed is quite the opposite – a “solution multiplying solution”

    Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina MacPherson | May 28, 2010 | Reply


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