Earth Equity News

Russians Suggest Nuking the Oil Gusher. By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience, May 12, 2010. "Using a nuclear explosion to try to plug the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico might sound like overkill, but a Russian newspaper has suggested just that based on past Soviet successes... The Russians previously used nukes at least five times to seal off gas well fires. A targeted nuclear explosion might similarly help seal off the [Gulf oil gusher]... 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 next three were sucessful. But,] the last attempt [which] took place in 1981, failed perhaps because of poor positioning, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report... Komsomoloskaya Pravda suggested that the United States might as well take a chance with a nuke, based on the historical 20% rate... 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."