Oil Spill Solutions: A Nuclear Option?

GREENandSAVE Staff
Posted on Thursday 3rd June 2010

According to Wednesday's New York Times, the US government is not considering the possibility of detonating a nuclear bomb close to the source of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

People have been talking about it, though. On CNN last week, for example, anchor John Roberts suggested that we "drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.”

And, as noted in Wednesday's New York Times article, there is a history of using nuclear bombs to seal off leaks:

Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow.

But, understandably, the Obama Administration is not interested:

Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically - it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.

It seems that they share the sentiment of National Post blogger Matt Gurney. "What's worse than an oil spill?," asked Gurney. "A radioactive oil spill."

GREENandSAVE LINKandLEARN:

Speaking of radical oil leak plug ideas, Charlie Szoradi, President of GREENandSAVE, has some of his own.
Speaking of offering those ideas to the people responsible for the spill, you can fill out this form and send your ideas to BP.
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