True/Slant brings us a really interesting piece about the "nuclear option" as regards the effort - continually botched by BP - to plug the oil leak which resulted from the Deepwater Horizon disaster over a month ago back on April 20. Soviet Russia was no stranger to oil leaks back in the heyday of the Communist superpower. The USSR used nuclear blasts to plug oil leaks five times between 1966 and 1979.
The top-selling Russian daily newspaper, Komsomoloskaya Pravda, reported* on this in May, remarking that the United States should consider such a method for plugging the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Methods such as the "top hat" cofferdam, a giant dome, and a "top kill" have failed to stop the leak (technically two leaks in different places - one at the end of a leader line from the well and one at the opening of the well itself) and it's beginning to look like a relief well is the only solution. This will take another month or so at least.
It sounds like the Soviets got it to work 4 out of 5 times - 80% odds of success!
However, we can probably rest assured that President Obama will not elect to detonate a nuke in the Gulf. That might negatively affect his approval ratings.
*Translated from Russian to English thanks to Google Translate. Whatever meaning was lost in translation is made up for by the humorous wording gained. (Joking aside, pretty amazing technology! And it only took about 10-15 seconds.)
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Comments: 4
2) I can just imagine Greenpeace's reaction should Obama seriously suggest this possibility.
"If you wanted to destroy the local ecosystem, just let the leak continue."