Slightly old, but timelessly funny yet scary.

As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians — the world’s biggest oil producers — have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.

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.

These kinds of surgical strikes to shut off underground leaks, however, were carried out only five times, with the last one occuring in 1979. And there was only one misfire, near Kharkov, Ukraine, where a nuclear blast was unable to stanch a gas leak.

Happily, with a track record like that, “the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%,” KP writes. “The Americans could certainly risk it.”

http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/2010/05/04/nuke-that-slick/

Blunt.

It's both hilarious and disturbing.

Any idea how this would work underwater?

Any idea how this would work underwater?

Essentially, they would drill a new hole near the well until they are well within a layer of solid rock. Then the nuke would be fitted in, and detonated. If everything goes to plan, the pressure from the explosion would cause the rock to move up against the pipe and pinch it shut.

This would never fly, of course. Even though it's insane, it's still less insane than consulting James Cameron.

However, this could mean that the shrimp population in the region would also mutate into jumbo shrimp, which would be pretty awesome for all. But there's also the chance that they could mutate into jumbo shrimp with lazer eyes, as shown in this artist's rendering:

Ohhhhh those Russians.

Essentially, they would drill a new hole near the well until they are well within a layer of solid rock. Then the nuke would be fitted in, and detonated. If everything goes to plan, the pressure from the explosion would cause the rock to move up against the pipe and pinch it shut.

This would never fly, of course. Even though it's insane, it's still less insane than consulting James Cameron.

They need to consult Michael Bay, the king of explosions. The nuke idea really sounds like an idea for a Michael Bay movie w/ Bruce Willis.

Edited June 2, 201015 yr by Cubical-aka-Moltar