Corporate cleanup efforts
June 10, 2010, 1:32 pm
Posted by Mollie Wilson O'Reilly
The folks at Upright Citizens Brigade imagine a catastrophic coffee spill at BP.
The coverage from The Onion on this subject has also been top-notch.
This is all very upsetting to me. I think, thought, that blame is not what is required at the moment. Yes I am angry at BP but let’s face it they bought the federal government, including this administration, so as i said lots of blame but this is not the time to nurse these. Every single bit of energy needs to be directed at cleaning up and reducing the damage from this leakage.
And I do think that the US federal government should be taking much more of a leadership role in coordinating and directing the clean up efforts while at the same time vigorously engaging with BP on strategies to contain the flow.
The degree of violence to the environment needs to be healed at the moment and we should be coming together around that goal. The earth is an organism and it is being wounded now and the species that depend on her, including the human species, are being hurt.
According to our Seventh Grade Science/Theology teacher, Sister Mary Regina (or maybe she was Sister Regina Mary) the force of Love is like a magnet. I am wondering if some sort of magnetic seal might work to stop the flow from the leakage.
I suppose many of us have sat around wondering why they didn’t just put a cap on the darned thing, but I think now I know why.
I have read that Gulf oil is normally at about 9000 psi (lb per sq. inch) pressure. To give a comparison, a SCUBA tank is normally pressurized to around 3000 psi. Since the well head is about 5000 feet deep you have a downward pressure due to the weight of the water that is about 2000 psi, which means the cap would have to withstand a pressure of about 7000 psi. I understand the pipe has a diameter of around 20 inches or an area of about 314 square inches. This means that the force on the cap would be in the order of 2,200,000 pounds.
I figure it would take a cube of iron over 16 feet on an edge set on top of the well head to stop the flow. Or if it was one foot square, it would have to be about 4000 feet high, almost a mile. All of a sudden I understand why they have to drill the relief well so deep in order to add enough drilling mud to stop the flow.
Some pretty impressive forces here.
Hugs,
Mike L
In 1963, one of the Soviet Union’s gas-rich locations was badly drilled. The resulting fire burned for three years, with the intensity never waning. All possible ways of fighting the flames were tried – to no avail.
3 years went by without a solution. Finally, the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb at the location. The massive shock wave compressed the Earth’s crust and sealed the leak.
Yes, that sounds insane – but it worked. True, a nuclear bomb irradiates the bomb site for a while, but that was deemed better than the effects of gas spewing out of the hole for 30 years.
Even if the cost-benefit analysis of doing the same in the Gulf turned out to be positive, I doubt that there is sufficient political will in Washington. However, I’ve heard more that one drilling expert interviewed on TV referring to the Soviet nuclear solution. If the Gulf spill can’t be plugged in, say, 12 months from now and the entire Gulf turns toxic, maybe wel’ll see some more radical options on the table.
Brian, I believe that the Soviets used this technique on several wells, and it worked on all but one. I don’t know how many, but someone told me it worked on 9 out of ten, not a bad average. I have also heard of two theories on how it worked, either the heat was sufficient to melt the rock which then cooled to form a glass-like barrier, or the shock caused the bore hole to collapse. Either one bothers me a bit with the kind of pressure that is reported to be behind this well. An underground bomb is a dirty bomb.
Oil leaks also occur naturally, just not as big as this one. And nature knows how to recover, although at a time scale that is a bit slower than we impatient people want. But it will recover, and using the oil as food, in the long run the environment may be richer than before the spill. I think it would take a lot longer to recover from a radioactive oil spill, although I think the chances of the nuclear solution failing is pretty small.
Nuking a well head sounds pretty strange(love) to me.
Moreover, if you can bomb the bejeezus out of a rogue well, what’s the incentive to rethink deep-water drilling? Or alternative fuel sources?
I see a message in this incident: Stop guzzling oil, Americans. Learn to save money, save resources, save wetlands, save brown pelicans. Save ourselves.
Michael, Sister Mary Regina/Regina Mary did not go into great detail regarding magnets and water pressure. Maybe you could move the water current in a circular pattern around the leak and change the downward pressure.
Human Life was lost because of inadequate protection.