In a recent New York Times op-ed piece with the title of “Blow Up the Well to Save the Gulf,” former nuclear submarine officer Christopher Brownfield draws our attention to what could be a better alternative for dealing with the BP oil spill. BP CEO Tony Hayward admitted to Congress that his company has no intention of plugging the ruptured Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico any longer. Instead, BP is going to take months to build a relief well that some experts predict may not even work. In light of BP and the Coast Guard’s inability to stem the tide of the oil leak, Brownfield makes a suggestion that gives the thinking human being pause. Why not let the US Navy stop the leak?
Brownfield suggests ‘Blow up the well’
Brownfield suggests we don’t hesitate and just blow up the well. There are thousands of barrels of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and BP and the Coast Guard lack the resources and expertise to deal with high-powered demolitions of the sort needed to deal with the Macondo oil well effectively. Thus far, billions of dollars have been thrown at the problem, to only small effect.
According to Brownfield, BP and the Coast Guard would still have an important role to play, namely cleanup on the surface. But the U.S. Navy has resources like special submarines that could likely have obtained some real-time info on the well – well in advance of the schedule BP chose to follow. Engineers from Naval Reactors – “the secretive program that is responsible for designing nuclear reactors for nuclear submarines,” says Brownfield – could have already dealt with how to blow up the well, if they’d been given leave to do so by President Obama.
Navy demolitions could commence then
The submarine won’t fire a torpedo and just blast off the oil well. First there would need to be a hole drilled parallel to the Macondo well. Explosives would then be put into the hole and detonated from a distance. Tons of explosives that would end up creating a “pressure wave hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch” strong would implode BP’s big problem easily, sending so much rock into the well that the flow would be stopped like a giant foot stepping on a garden hose. Brownfield writes that the “expansion and collapse of explosive gases inside the hole would act like a hydraulic jackhammer, further pulverizing the rock.” Nuclear devices wouldn’t even be necessary; they’d just be an overkill, in Brownfield’s view, although Soviet Russia has used them successfully for this purpose before.
Worst and best case scenario
At best, if the Navy blew up the well, the flow would be stopped and long-term cleanup could progress toward an endgame. At worst, the explosions could punch a larger hole and increase the oil flow. But as former Naval nuclear sub officer Brownfield believes, “It’s virtually inconceivable that an explosive could blast a bigger hole than already exists and release even more oil,” when the features of the ocean bed around the Macondo well are taken very much into consideration. Considering how much money might just be saved by abandoning ineffective capping techniques (not to mention stemming the tide so that damage to nature and the cost of long-term cleanup can be lessened a lot), it seems the course is clear for politicians with the foresight and courage to give the green light.
Citations
New York Times
nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22Brownfield.html?ref=opinionhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22Brownfield.html?ref=opinion
