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Prior to reading this, I had an impression that the most used method for putting out the burning oil wells is TNT - the blast wave just blows off the burning fi
by Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Prior to reading this, I had an impression that the most used method for putting out the burning oil wells is TNT - the blast wave just blows off the burning fire, and it burns no more. However, this article suggests that just blowing off the fire is not enough, because hot sand and air might re-ignite the oil. So, probably, the explosives also damage the well, disrupting the supply of the fuel.
- gambiting 5y agoI like the one where an oil well fire was actually put out with a small nuclear explosion - that seems to have worked(multiple times in fact!) https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonated-a-nuke-miles-underground-to-put-out-a-gas-well-fire https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...
- teh_klev 5y ago> I had an impression that the most used method for putting out the burning oil wells is TNT You're not wrong. The technique was pioneered by Red Adair who was quite a famous firefighter with a speciality in blowout fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair It's worth doing a search on YouTube for videos of his "work": https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=red+adair https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=red+adair
- wrp 5y agoAlso inspired the movie Hellfighters. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063060/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063060/)
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoCapping the well while burning has a huge advantage over explosives which is that it's much harder for people who don't know what they're talking about to bike-shed the process and therefore has less risk of cost ballooning over time and investing in those techniques/experience/know how often look like the more assured option even if it's the more difficult and costly technique on paper both up front and per use.