Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind US research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and ’70s and Viktor Mikhailov, a Physicist who served as a Russian Minister of Nuclear Energy, agree on a comparitively cheap solution for BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico – just nuke it. In what admittedly sounds like the plot to a blockbuster hollywood film, the Special Report: Should BP nuke its leaking well? opens with,

His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

“A nuclear explosion over the leak,” he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. “I don’t know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved.”

…

Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he’s an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. “This option is worth the money,” he says.

As gung-ho and ‘Bruce Willis’ as it sounds the idea actually seems to have some merit. In addition to the cost being comparitively cheap (if BP sold the rights to Hollywood they might even cover the cost of the nuke) the article goes on talk about the environmental impact.

Nordyke too believes the nuclear option should be on the table. After seeing nine U.S. nuclear explosions and standing behind the control board of one, he estimates that a nuclear bomb would have roughly an 80 to 90 percent chance of successfully blocking the oil. According to his estimates, it would have to be an explosion of around 30 kilotons, equivalent to roughly two Hiroshima bombs or three times as big as Mikhailov’s estimate. The explosion would also need to remain at least 3 to 4 miles away from other offshore wells in the area.

The bomb, says Nordyke, would be dropped in a secondary well approximately 60-70 feet away from the leaking shaft. There it would create a large cavity filled with gas. The gas would melt the surrounding rock, crush it and press it into the leaking well to close it shut.

Although the BP well is thousands of feet deeper than those closed in the Soviet Union, Nordyke says the extra depth shouldn’t make a difference. He also says that so far below the ground, not much difference exists in onshore or underwater explosions — even though the latter have never been tried.

Nordyke says fears that radiation could escape after the explosion are unfounded. The hole would be about 8 inches in diameter and, despite the shockwave, the radiation should remain captured. Even in the case of radiation escape, he says, its dispersed effect would be less than that of floating oil patches.

The article concludes that despite support for some sort of explosive solution even coming from quarters as unlikely as Bill Clinton (well, ok, maybe ‘just blowing it all up’ as a solution is not that unlikely for Clinton) the idea is highly unlikely to be implemented for the obvious reasons that managing the outcry towards the proposed solution would probably be worse than the outcry towards the oil spill. In short, it ‘aint going to happen but let’s cut to Mikhailov for the final scene:

“Still,” he says, momentarily hard to see through a cloud of smoke from his cigarettes, “I see no other solution for sealing leaks like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The problem, he goes on, is that “Americans just don’t know enough about nuclear explosions to solve this problem … But they should ask us — we have institutes, we have professionals who can help them solve this. Otherwise BP are just torturing the people and themselves.”

Hat Tip: Zwinglius Redivivus

Tags:   Bill Clinton · BP Oil Leak · Gulf of Mexico · Milo Nordy · Nuclear Bomb · Viktor Mikhailov2 Comments