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British Petroleum: The Nuclear Option
I have never been able to use my talents both as a securities analyst and a nuclear weapons designer simultaneously, but British Petroleum (BP) has at last enabled me to rise to the call.
Back before personal computers, the Internet, and hedge funds were invented, most mathematicians, like myself, ended up working for the Defense Department in some form or another. In my case, that involved a summer with the Atomic Energy Agency working on the neutron bomb at the nuclear test site at Mercury, Nevada in the early seventies.
There, yields meant millions killed, not interest paid. After BP’s serial failures in plugging their Gulf leak, several industry and military figures have suggested doing the job with a small tactical nuclear weapon. This would actually work, and I learned for the first time from CNBC that the Soviet Union used this desperate measure on three runaway wells in the past.
From the fifties to the seventies, the US conducted hundreds of underground tests, which involved drilling a six foot wide hole 1,000 feet deep, filling it with concrete, and then pushing a big red button. To my knowledge, radiation leaked to the surface in only one case, when a bomb was set off near an unmapped geological fault, frying two ranchers.
The explosion would create a cavern deep under the surface which would be sealed by the 400 million degree temperatures these weapons create, containing the radiation. I remember walking around some old above ground sites, and the sand had been turned to colorful glass.
The kind of bomb needed already exists in the US arsenal. Only 20 pounds of fissile material is required to build a nuke, a sphere smaller than a golf ball. Remember, uranium and plutonium are four times heavier than lead. That is small enough to ram down an oil well, with room to spare. Such a weapon, called the “Davy Crocket” was designed to be carried and operated by a single soldier, and was actually field tested in Nevada during the fifties. That was before we figured out that many of our own troops involved in such a maneuver would end up dying of cancer, so the project was shelved.
There would be no violation of the nuclear test ban treaty, since it covers only above ground tests. Underground tests ended voluntarily in 1992, mostly because they were too expensive, not because of some high minded ideal.
All of BP’s efforts to date have really been “Hail Mary’s” doomed to failure. The only real chance is to relieve the pressure by drilling several adjacent wells, and that will take months. If BP has discovered the mother of all fields with pressures so enormous, they can’t be controlled with modern technology, a possibility which some geologists admit, then more huge leaks will spring and the nuclear option will be the only one left. In the meantime, if a serious hurricane hits the region, a mathematical probability, then we will see the environmental equivalent of Chernobyl meets Katrina.
In this scenario, you can kiss BP goodbye.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at my brand new site at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on the “Today’s Radio Show” menu tab on the left on my home page.
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ah............dr strangelove. glad you could make it to our little get together.
can i get you something?? a marked down drill rig, a polonium cocktail, an irradiated sea floor and a low yield nuke, perhaps???
Doesn't sound like a terrible idea, tactically speaking. But the PR would be so bad, nobody would greenlight that except a red dictator, who would simply proceed to threaten the removal of various armies of vodka-by-the-can vending machines across the countryside if anyone protested too loudly. We don't have vodka in a can to take away here, so we have to let the oil go. We do have some fantastic pictures of the long awaited 'oil covered pelicans.' At least the media has a lot of environmentally correct coverage to fill up the time now.
Even DudleyDoRight thinks any nuclear option won't happen until after the next presidential election!
It has never been done to a deepsea well with the well pressures that exist. It could open the well clear to Hades not only releasing toxic oil and gas under unbelievable pressures that could no longer be contained, but it would add radiation to the mix.
No offense, but a really, really stupid idea.
Probably the closest thing the US did was the Amchitka tests off Alaska, 80Kt, 1M, and 5M at progressively deeper depths last at 1600m in pretty much saturated soil. Didn't end too well, all leaking far more than predicted.
LoneStarHog
But would we wind up with a Crack in the World scenario?
1965. Summary from IMDB: Dr. Steven Sorenson (Andrews) plans to tap the geothermal energy of the Earth's interior by means of a thermonuclear device detonated deep within the Earth. Despite dire warnings by fellow scientist Ted Rampian (Moore), Dr Sorenson proceeds with the experiment after secretly learning that he is terminally ill. This experiment causes a crack to form and grow within the earth's crust, which threatens to split the earth in two if it is not stopped in time
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8720806257609918145#
Use the nuke only if you attach BP's Chairman at the point if detonation.
I suggest goal seeking motivation with a "top to bottom kill" of certain org charts.
That should make for some interesting fuel for tomorrow: Irradiated oil. Should yield some interesting tailpipe emissions. Wonder how much oil will be lost for future drilling due to the radiation? If oil is seeping from other locations what's to keep the irradiated oil from seeping out at locations miles from the initial blast? Just a couple of questions from the totally ignorant.
"Mommy, why is the rain on fire?"
Wow. Makes me think of the bombing of Dresden. Escape to Tralfamadore is eminent!
Yep, same thing happened at Yucca Flats except water aquifers. Huge problem.
Hmmm--Thank you...
yeah i can see BP and the Goobermint fucking that little experiment up too. Turning a 19 inch hole into a um, slightly larger one. No way IMO.
I agree. Mad Hedge Fund Trader should stick to his marginal "talents" flipping digital bits and stfu about detonating nukes a mile under the sea.
I heard they're gonna run a straw poll at ZH before they make up their minds!
</sarcasm>
never bring your health problem to a surgeon and expect a solution that does not include a knife.
Right! To a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Whats that smell
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail, yes I would.
I still like the bales of oil approach, myself.
In fact, t'would be one hell of a Marvelous Make Work Project, a la the New Deal.
Take all the Unemployed (er, excuse me, offer the Unemployed, and then we really get to see who Wants to Work) at Minimum Wage, House them in the Katrina Trailers, given 'em each a Shovel, Stick, Mop, Bale of Hay or Cotton, big Bag-0-Hefties and begin the clean up.
I do not say this humorously. Food for Thought. The Disaster has Happened, and Needs to Be Cleaned. QED
Ever wonder why wherever there is a natural disaster, economies later boom? Post Katrina, the economy bounced...the Interstate over Lake Pontchartrain didn't rebuild itself.
Put gobs and gobs and oodles and oodles of People to Work who Want Work, house and feed them, truck the waste away, which would be largely cleaned by hand....
Be a Big Economic Boost, employ millions in Ecologically Sensitive effort....
Addresses a Number of Social Goals.
And Yes, some will find this Repugnant, an Affront to Political Sensibilities, but it Would Constitutes a Jobs Program unparalleled since the Reconstruction Era of the New Deal. Seems if that's DC's Goal, then there's a place for Real direct Fiscal Stimulus. Make lost fishing, tourist trade and associated Economic Privations Pale.
Not Junk after all, eh Gully? Thanks for the Thought Experiment.
"Ever wonder why wherever there is a natural disaster, economies later boom?"
Ah, the broken window fallacy. Did you miss Econ 101 class?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
The only conceivable way a disaster can help the economy is if, due to the profit motive, you wanted to destroy some capital (and human lives, I guess), but you didn't have a cheap way of doing it. But the disaster came along and did the destruction for you.
Are you junking me or Bastiat?
They brought in Mexicans to fix this place up after Katrina, and most of them are still here having "anchor babies." The locals wouldn't do the work, they were too busy dealing crack and shooting hoops. They'll probably have to go to Guatemala or Honduras to get the workers to clean up this oil mess.
+100000000000000000
A lot of the New Orleans locals came to Houston and didn't give a shit about rebuilding or cleaning up. Plus they have the added affect of spiking crime rates in Houston. You'd think that refugee trash would be grateful. What a bunch of fuckers!
The Sam's Clubs were packed full of refugees using their Fema debit cards to buy plasmas (witnessed first hand). Stories around Houston from cleaning staff at hotels (Uncle Sam footing the bill) of rooms filled with electronics.
One more time with feeling:
The leak will stop when the reservoir empties
not "empties" but when the pressure differential between the reservoir and water at 2 miles under the sea reduces to parity.
Wrong. Even if the pressure were equalized, oil and gas would still travel upward, being lighter than water. But at least concrete could be used to seal the hole.
The leak will stop when a successful relief well is drilled. Assuming the first such attempt works, and assuming that hurricanes don't get in the way, the leak will be stopped in August at best.
correct
Either way, we should be setting off more nukes.
Right. Trying to nuke that oil leak would be ridiculous, but there's still lots of other stuff that could be nuked, so people shouldn't give up hope for a big nuke kaboom. Like, if the European Central Bank were nuked, it would definitely affect the Euro, I bet.