Am I the only one who thinks the Soviet oil-well/nuke story

[Codeine]

is almost certainly bogus?

[charlie]

1. Single-sourced from one of the Pravdas

both of which are variations of "Alex Jones Edits the Enquirer".

Komsomolskaya Pravda are the guys who claimed they cooked an egg between 2 cellphones in little over an hour. The story might've landed in your inbox a few years ago.

So, who knows? I sure wouldn't bet on the nuke story being true.

[salvorhardin]

2. Aye, I think it's almost certainly false too

Komsomolskaya Pravda started as the official organ of the Communist Union of Youth, but now it's a nationwide tabloid owned by an energy company with close ties to Gazprom (according to Wikipedia). Perhaps, aside from its sensationalist value, it was an effort by one oil and gas company (Gazprom) to spread a little FUD about another oil and gas company (BP)?

[charlie]

6. Yeah, it could be that

There might even be a prank element, like "doctors" who call strangers and get them to disrobe. Goofing the US into using a nuke would be the Mother of all stunts.

Ames and Taibbi started The Exile in Moscow because they believed a paper could get away with shit it couldn't do anywhere else.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

3. I've been thinking the same thing.

The first time I heard it, I thought, "When the fuck did that happen?"

[Warpy]

4. Yeah, it's rubbish

Think about it, a nuke would blast away part of the ocean floor and leave a nice, big crater over the gusher, enlarging the hole. Conventional explosives would do the same thing. The hole itself would not be crushed as the contents of the oil layer is under such tremendous pressure. The oil would not combust under sea because of the absence of oxygen.

Trust me, the trigger happy war hawks have already suggested using some of the big firecrackers they've wanted to set off for 60 years and have been shot down by geologists and engineers, alike.

Explosives are useful for putting out oil rig fires above ground. They're useless in stopping a gusher.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Probably.

Soviet news reporting was never exactly noted for its reliability, after all.

[Odin2005]

7. I don't beleive it one bit, either.

We would have known about it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. There is apparently a DoE report on it, but it seems to say it was for gas wells, not oil

A first test in the fall of 1966 proved successful in sealing up an underground gas well in southern Uzbekistan, and so the Russians used nukes four more times for capping runaway wells.

"The second 'success' gave Soviet scientists great confidence in the use of this new technique for rapidly and effectively controlling ran away gas and oil wells," according to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report on the Soviet Union's peaceful uses of nuclear explosions.

A last attempt took place in 1981, but failed perhaps because of poor positioning, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report.
...
The Russians were using nukes to extinguish gas well fires in natural gas fields, not sealing oil wells gushing liquid, so there are big differences, and this method has never been tested in such conditions.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/russia-nuke-gulf-oil-well-100512.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29

So if that did happen, we have to consider the difference between a runaway gas well and an oil one. For the gas wells, the Soviet aim would have been to extinguish a fire, and stop there being a continuing fire risk at the site. If by exploding a bomb underground, they just opened up many more cracks for the gas to escape into the rock and to the surface via different routes, they may not have cared, as long as the concentration of methane wasn't too much. With oil under the ocean, however, more routes for it to get into the ocean just means more cracks to concrete over. If they are small, and the oil flow through them relatively slow, it might be easier to cap each one; but it could be a bigger problem - many slow seeps of oil that has passed through rock now comtaminated by a nuclear explosion.

I highly doubt any politician would want to be "the one who set off a nuke in the Gulf of Mexico in desperation" anyway.

[trotsky]

9. This whole oil leak incident...

has REALLY left me depressed about the state of basic science literacy in this country. As if I wasn't already depressed enough about it already.

[charlie]

10. Yeah, but what imaginations we've got!

You know the Einstein quote about imagination being paramount. So, if anyone gives us any shit, we just slap a little Einstein on him and he'll be all like, "Whoa, you got me."

Cheer up, we're covered :crazy:

[trotsky]

11. "Whoa, you got me."

LMAO

[TZ]

12. But you AREN'T a physicist so you don't know it won't work!

So okay, the woos won't listen to scientists about vaccine safety but they trust hawklike scientists who likely work for the Defense department? Just fucking astonishing to me- its more of a basic lack of critical thinking skills, IMO. You DON'T have to have a lot of physics background to know this is a baaaad idea. Oh and why aren't they mouthing the crap about "unintended consequences" they always mouth with GMO's. Hypocrisy runs deep around here.

[Codeine]

13. I swear to the FSM

if I see one more "bright idea" about "just dropping a big weight on the leak" I'm going to lose my shit and go screaming into the night. Folks who couldn't pass an eighth grade science test honestly presume they have better ideas than the hundreds of specialized engineers working day and night on the problem.

That and "they just want to save their well." Good grief. :puke:

[realisticphish]

14. yeah, that's BS

"they just want to save their well"

lets see: PR benefits of stopping the oil tomorrow: unbelievable
cost of quietly redrilling near the site in a few years: not unbelievable

They're all about the Benjamins, but they're not STUPID

[Codeine]

16. And wouldn't you fucking know it,

the same stupid-ass idea was just posited for the umpteenth time on GD. :eyes:

[trotsky]

17. But you don't understand...

there's like 2 tons of pressure PER SQUARE INCH down there. You put a big rock on top of it, and the ocean will PUSH DOWN to seal the leak! Simple! :crazy:

[realisticphish]

18. by that logic

wouldn't the big metal silo dealy have worked?

[charlie]

20. Kimberly-Clark will save the day

with a giant tampon. You just wait.

This stuff makes me think of a regular poster who'd be in peak oil threads calling it the scam of the century. Because the origin of oil is abiotic, you see. Come to think of it, it was the unexpected recharge of a depleted well in the Gulf of Mexico that convinced her... which, I suppose, means if Deep Horizon isn't capped, it could gush forever, blowing oil until the St Lawrence Seaway is plugged with tarballs.

[realisticphish]

21. if left long enough

oil-dwelling creatures would evolve, more than likely. Nature likes filling in, even in hostile environments

[charlie]

22. Hope that'd include us

Evolving into oil dwellers, that is. It'd suck to be driven to extinction because we inadvertently made earth a buffet for oil munching bacteria. That would just be embarrassing :)

I can't remember the name of the guy who popularized abiotic oil, but I do remember reading that his idea was given some credence by Russian ultra-deep core samples, at least as an alternative process. Unfortunately though, it wasn't the confirmation he'd hoped for -- judging from the samples, IF there WAS abiotic creation going on, it was slower than the standard process. That didn't put a dent in the poster's (the one I was talking about above) conviction the world is awash in freshly made petroleum, though. She was one of those strong personalities who didn't mind telling a threadful of people they were idiots, loudly and often. If she was around, I'm sure her take on this fiasco would be wildly entertaining.

[realisticphish]

23. yeah

that's like saying that marble is a 100% renewable resource, since in millions of years the eroded material would get processed through the geological cycles, perhaps back into granite

[trotsky]

25. I remember encountering one of those abiotic oil disciples.

The one thing they don't have an answer for, of course, is that even if unlimited in supply, that doesn't really solve the main problem: spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of course the abiotic types also tend right-wing (as far as I've noticed), so they don't believe in climate change anyway.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

19. Is anyone else reminded of "ACME" prodcuts?

[PVnRT]

27. Try being an engineer with experience in piping and fluids reading those threads

I've given up, since the temptation to just call everyone fucking idiots is far too high.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

15. To top that off, it's compounded by the daily posts ingeniously declaring that all humans should go

away forever to save Mother Earth.

Like Mother Earth really gives a shit.

[charlie]

24. And the reminders

that long ago, people "knew" how to live in harmony with their environments, not considering that not having the numbers or wherewithal to do modern destruction might be mistaken for harmonious intent. It was one of those ostensibly earth-aware humans who cut down the last tree on Easter Island.

[TZ]

26. Funny, I guess humans hunting Mammoths and other

animals to extinction was "living in harmony". Oy.