"Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

[GreyGeek]

Re: "Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

I'm no expert on this, and my training on Atomic Demolition Munitions is now 40 years old. And I still to this day am bound by security regulations, but I believe it could be done with a much smaller device than 100 kt.

No doubt they've reduced the size and increased the punch in the intervening 40 years, including "dial up" yield levels between a few Kt and 250 Kt on a single device, but at a dept of 18,000 feet below the sea bed, the pressures there would be 10,000 psi. Choose too small a device and it won't generate enough pressure to compress the formation against the walls of the pipes. Also, with one pipe inside the other, it could happen that while the outer pipe is crushed against the inner pipe, it absorbs too much of the force and the inner pipe isn't crushed enough to seal off the leak. So, the blast would have to be big enough to guarantee the crushing of both pipes. Even when the drill stem fell over and the 22" pipe bent more than 90 degrees, instead bending and sealing off the inner pipe, the outer pipe cracked, allowing oil to come up the casing where the drilling mud normally flows back to the surface. IF the explosion is too big it could just shear off the pipe and create a cavern into which the oil would flow. After that cavern was filled up the oil would continue up the drill stem, unless it was capped off before the explosion.

And it would not require actually inserting it into the pipe. The immense pressure at that depth is, of course, something that would have to be dealt with. Residual radiation would not be a major problem with the proper munition.

The device would have to be placed near the base of the well stem, 18,000 feet down. The only way to get it there would be through the relief well. The device would have to fit inside the relief well and be lowered all the way to the bottom. When the relief well curves toward the leaking well the device will have to be pushed if it can't slide down the partially horizontal relief well.

In an airborne atomic blast the only source of radioisotopes is the material of the bomb itself, and the Oxygen and Nitrogen in the air. On the surface the bomb can also irradiate and heat ground materials, inducing radioisotope formation with that part of the explosion envelope which contacts or is close to the ground. In a subterranean explosion the entire fireball is enclosed by formation. ALL of the blast is absorbed by the formation. ANY material, heated high enough, can create lighter radioactive elements because the nucleus will split into lighter elements at the temperatures of a confined fission bomb. The most abundant elements in the crust are Silicon, Aluminum and Oxygen. Silicon's binding energy is 8 Mev per nucleon, which is also the approximately the same for the other two. Iron is a little more but it can be split at nuclear temperatures into two or more isotopes, some of which will be radioactive.

A simple run-a-way fission power plant produced enough radioactive material to blanket Kiev and all land within a radius of 50 miles. http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html About 2.6 million people were evacuated. That was 24 years ago.

Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for the next 48.000 years, but humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600 years - give or take three centuries. The experts predict that, by then, the most dangerous elements will have disappeared - or been sufficiently diluted into the rest of the world's air, soil and water.

[oshunluvr]

Re: "Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

Totally off topic but there's a great special about Chernobyl now and the animals that live there. Discovery channel I think.

Sorry - but the rest of this thread is waaayy over my head! :P

[GreyGeek]

Re: "Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

Here is a map which was made in 1997 by a research project which dropped 194 balls into the Gulf at depths between 20-60m, within the yellow box, which corresponds to the area of greated oil accumulation from the Deep Water Horizon. From this graph one can predict where the plums will end up. Notice that some of the balls end up heading North on the East coast of Florida.

Figure 3. Paths of 194 floating probes released into the yellow-outlined area in the northeast Gulf of Mexico between February 1996 and February 1997 as part of a study by the Mineral Management Service (MMS). The probes were all launched into waters with depth between 20 and 60 meters. Image credit: Yang, H., R.H. Weisberga, P.P. Niilerb, W. Sturgesc, and W. Johnson, 1999, Lagrangian circulation and forbidden zone on the West Florida Shelf, Continental Shelf Research Volume 19, Issue 9, July 1999, Pages 1221-1245 doi:10.1016/S0278-4343(99)00021-7

[kyonides]

Re: "Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

I'd just imagine how "easy" it'd be for a fisherman to sell such creatures... to Hollywood studios!!!

Even if they use a nuke to sealing off the well, is there a possibility that any seaquake or anything else might reopen it and let it release thousands of oil "barrels", on a daily basis, to the ocean? Or what could happen once hurricanes come back to the Caribbean this year? Would they make the oil reach the coasts of several states?

[GreyGeek]

Re: "Top Kill" FAILED -- here is what is affected ...

I just saw (12 Noon, CST) some interesting live video from BP (http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ov_stream.html).

When I clicked on it the video cam on an ROV was showing the deck of some kind of ship or platform. I suspect it is a platform. Suddenly, the ROV camera scene indicated that it was being lowered. I expected it to go straight down. I was surprised when the bottom of the Gulf nearly instantly appeared, after the bubbles cleared up. The sea bed was no more than 50 or so feet below sea level! I was confused. The sea bed is supposed to be 5,000 down!

The ROV moved horizontally for about 100-150 feet, appeared to pass over an edge of some sort, and then began descending rapidly. Almost immediately the view turned dark gray. All I could see was white and black objects suspended in the water but appearing to be moving upward as the ROV descended. Yesterday I watched as they raised the diamond wire cutter ROV, and some other material, from the sea bed 5,000 feet below. When the ROVs got to about 200 feet below the surface the sea brightened up considerably, and at 130 feet I could see reflections from the surface. The diamond cutter ROV continued on to the surface while the ROV on which the camera I was watching was attached stayed at 133 feet and watched it rise. It then began a quick trip back to the bottom. During both the brightest part of the rise and descent I could see blotches of oil passing by. At about 483 feet the ROV stopped and remained there for several minutes before BP switched to another camera.

On today's dive the view turned dark grey almost immediately after the ROV dropped off the ridge and down toward the sea bed and continues to remain so, with bubbles and dark smudges moving upward. I am going to continue watching the link above until they switch or the ROV reaches the well head on the sea bed. Like I said, I am not sure that this ROV came from the "mother ship" on the surface above the Deep Horizon well head. In pictures and movies of activities taking place on the surface I never saw a "platform" type rig, but IF there is one near by then this raises SIGNIFICANT ALARMS about the use of the "Nuclear" option to close the well. This means that the Deep Horizen well head is close to the edge of a 5,000 foot wall!

I heard one "expert" this morning claim that setting a Nuke next to the well head on the sea floor would create a "glass cover" over the well head, sealing it. He had, no doubt, seen famous photos of the Trinity site, where glass surrounded the stubby remains of the tower out to a distance of a couple of hundred feet. The maximum thickness of the glass was, IIRC, about six inches. He assumed that the sea floor is sandy. It is not. It is covered by several tens of feet of biological materials, muck and mud. His plan is the surest way to create an unstoppable oil leak for decades to come. The Soviets tried to use ROVs on the roof of the Chernobyl reactor building but the radiation scrambled their electronics and rendered them useless. They sent hundreds of "Reservists" on to the roof into 10,000-30,000 Roentgens/hr radiation to clean equally hot reactor debris off the roof so they could cap and seal it. Most died from the exposure.

But, the possibility of the DWH well head being close to the wall of the continental shelf raises the possibility that a nuclear shot placed anywhere from the sea bed down to several thousand feet below the sea bed could trigger a land slide off the wall of the shelf, which could trigger a TSUNAMI of monstrous proportions in the Gulf, perhaps a hundred feet tall, or taller along the coasts of the all the nations surrounding it. A hundred foot tall tidal wafe would sweep clear across Florida and travel North into Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama as far as a sub-fifty foot elevation would allow.

It's now 12:35PM and the ROV is still descending.

EDIT: It is now 12:45PM and the DWH well head came into view. I can see the spot light, and the well head with it's venting oil plume. So, that establishes that within 45 minutes after leaving the surface of a location which has a sea bed only 100 feet or so below the boat or platform, the ROV arrives at the DWH well head. The DWH well head IS very close to the 5,000 foot drop off of the continental shelf. A nuke in that location would not be advisable.