Bomb The Oil Leak (Plug The Damn Hole Alert)

wall street journal ^

[Minn]

Why not?

Highly radioactive underwater cloud drifting around the sea, maybe?

[dalight]

This is a stupid idea, but within it is a smart idea. What is needed is a melt. Drill a hole beside the current one down perhaps 5000+ below the sea floor, deep into the bedrock perhaps 25-50 ft from the current well. Drop a small nuclear device, cement it in and detonate. This will melt the rock, pipe and all and make a nice plug. You want alot of heat yield and not much explosion, but you need an incredible source of heat and this will do the job.

If you could open a large enough cavity, you might use thermite, but I just don't know how this would be done.

Traditional bombs only do explode or crack and both of those aren't going to be all that helpful. Oil well people do the crack thing to get more production out of the well. So, you know that's not going in the right direction. More likely you damage the casing, and that's all.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

That might be the winner right there, very interesting.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I keep hearing this “bomb it” suggestion. What’s the guarantee that will work instead of making things worse?

If you bury a large explosive deep enough, it won't generate a new path to the surface. If you set off the blast far enough away from the drill hole, it won't even create an open path from the drill hole to the bomb blast. The only question remaining is, "What size bomb would, if detonated at what distance from the drill hole, pinch off the drill hole pipe without risk of creating a new leak worse than the existing one?" And what level of confidence can be attained in that prediction?

I am not surprised that you don't know the answers to those questions; I don't know the answers myself. But my intuition says that experts in the field of underground detonations, including people who dealt with underground nuclear tests, would be able to make a reliable analysis and that such an operation could be performed. Just a guess.

[himno hero]

If you thought the gulf was bad now....let alone the future..., this is nothing in comparison to destroying the gulf and half the atlantic......There is a whack of oil coming out of there at high pressure.......

Some of these guys demonstrate little foresight.

[Sawdring]

Couldn’t they drill at an angle, 3 holes, maybe 200 feet below the sea floor right that come very close to the well piping and then put high explosives at the end of the holes, seal off the holes and then blow the explosives? Would this stop the flow of oil?

[valkyry1]

Thats about it.

[Smokin' Joe]

One more time....

The relief wells are designed to intercept the original wellbore in the vicinity of the producing horizon, near the total depth of the well which is blowing out.

The relief wells can be used to introduce heavy drilling fluid, (AKA "kill mud") to the original wellbore, exerting enough hydrostatic pressure to stop the formation from producing. Then the well can be cemented shut.

The relief wells were spudded on May 4th and the 17th, and are in progress, due to reach depth in August.

This is the tried-and-true method to control a blowout when other means fail.

Before anyone goes and blows up the wellhead, disrupts (but fails to seal the wellbore) or causes some other major damage to further complicate the relief well/kill/cement process, how about waiting for that to work?

The Ixtoc 1 well (1979) blew out for 9+ months in the Bay of Campeche (the southern bight of the Gulf of Mexico) before it was finally controlled. This well has had many attempts to capture the oil blowing out of it, aomething the Ixtoc did not have, and they have met with some success. But the relief wells have been the main plan to kill the well since the ttempt to close the BOP failed.

[ctdonath2]

Oh don’t misunderstand! My morbid curiosity is gleefully engaged!
Plugging a one foot hole with a nuke at risk of poisoning all life on earth is, um, engaging.