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The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
- PhantomGremlin 12y agoI'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned Project Orion[1] which involved using atomic bombs to propel a spacecraft. Seems a little hare-brained to me, but they took it pretty seriously back then. Of course, it was all just theoretical, which might be the reason nobody brought it up in this discussion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propul...
- legohead 12y agoThey've also used them to stop underwater oil leaks. If we had done that with the last BP spill things would have been solved a lot quicker!
- dingaling 12y ago> If we had done that with the last BP spill ITYM Transocean / Halliburton spill...
- unclebunkers 12y agoWe quickly realized that bacteria have evolved to eat oil, so it wasn't quite as big of an environmental disaster as first expected. I would not expect radiation to improve the situation at all.
- frontline 12y agoi suggest you investigate the side effects of corexit that have emerged since the incident
- sliverstorm 12y agoCorexit is a dispersant, not a bacteria that eats oil.
- andreasvc 12y agoThe comment you're replying to is arguing that corexit is harmful.
- sliverstorm 12y agoObviously, but what does that comment have to do with anything? So corexit is harmful. My gp was talking about nuclear explosions and bacteria, not corexit.
- tempestn 12y agoThe grandparent also said, "so it wasn't quite as big of an environmental disaster as first expected." The comment about corexit would appear to refer to that part. You could argue that it was or wasn't as big of a disaster as expected, but the corexit comment was certainly relevant regardless.
- mason240 12y agoIt wasn't relevant. Damage from corexit would have be factored into initial concerns.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI note that the FDA didn't find a problem with food safety (http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/RecallsOutbreaksEmergencies/UCM250307.pdf http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/RecallsOutbreaksEmergencie...) the Wikipedia page references an unreliable Vice/MotherJones article. Not finding much on its side effects from research though. Do you have some additional pointers? these guys http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24108904 http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24108904 suggest that it doesn't help the bacteria work, but doesn't suggest any enhanced toxicity.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- thenmar 12y agoHere's the wikipedia page for anyone curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corexit#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corexit#Toxicity There are plenty of links to reliable sources there. Which page were you looking at?
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI was mostly using Google Scholar to look for peer reviewed work with the keywords 'corexit toxicity' There are a about a dozen papers on the first page, of the ones I could read without jumping various firewalls the conclusions tended toward 'less toxic' than 'more toxic'. Would love to see a meta analysis too but didn't dig one up.
- kazinator 12y agoPlus wouldn't there be some concern about the ocean floor collapsing due to the blast?
- JshWright 12y agoCollapsing into what?
- zachrose 12y agoMagma? Hades?
- jfb 12y agoMore turtles.
- kazinator 12y agoAround the time of the Deepwater Horizon accident, I recall that there was some speculation about the ocean floor being fragile and breaking, causing a vast release of oil and methane. So the answer to "into what" would be to collapse into the oil-filled voids within the floor. It's just something I heard on the news when this was news. Maybe it was complete nonsense. Sorry if I offended anyone with my comment!
- marvin 12y agoThere aren't any oil-filled voids within the ocean floor. Oil and gas is contained in pourous rock, but the oil-containing rock is mostly solid. In the Deepwater Horizon case, it was also more than five kilometers below the ocean floor, so in other words very far underground. I have heard the same speculations you refer to in the news, but I think they instead refered to the topmost portion of the well being destroyed, creating cracks in the top of the shaft of the well and allowing oil to leak in all directions. I am not a geologist, so I don't know how plausible these worries were.
- wavefunction 12y ago>>so it wasn't quite as big of an environmental disaster as first expected True, it didn't wipe out ALL life in the gulf. Hurray!
- lotsofmangos 12y agoNot as quick as if they had threatened to nuke Tony Hayward's favourite golf course instead.
- elementai 12y agoI remember that russian specialists had actually offered help with that at the time.
- BrandonMarc 12y ago... as well as once in 1968, twice in 1972, and once in 1981. 0.o The USSR had a whole program to investigate peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs), called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. [1] Sadly, some of these experiments went rather wrong, unexpectedly releasing lots of radioactive nasty near populated areas. The US also did this sort of thing from 1961 to 1973, and the program was cancelled in '77. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare
- Thrymr 12y agoMy "favorite" Soviet use of nuclear explosions was for deep seismic exploration: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=deep+seismic+sounding+with+nuclear+explosives http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=deep+seismic+sounding+wi...
- TrainedMonkey 12y agoI can't find any reliable sources, so treat this as my own speculation. I heard that there were programs for a while in two big countries with acronyms starting with US that aimed into exploration of causing earthquakes/tsunamis that would hit across the word by using multiple underground nukes and constructive interference.
- icelancer 12y agoCertainly reasonable to believe. Those countries were exploring literally any and all avenues to undermine the other.
- tedks 12y agoThere was an American program towards the end of the second world war aiming at causing tsunamis to weaken Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_bomb
- FranOntanaya 12y ago
- source99 12y agoThe US and Russia cooperated on a program to do this in space in order to stop a asteroid from destroying the planet. Bruce Willis led the mission.
- source99 12y agoWow. That's a lot of down votes for a joke/movie reference that shouldn't have offended anyone. Maybe this community isn't for me!
- ars 12y agoIt might not be. We are working VERY hard to make sure it doesn't turn into reddit. So jokes are strongly discouraged (with a few rare exceptions), as are memes, clichés, image macros, or anything like that.
- cbd1984 12y agoActually, you're trying hard to make sure it remains like a small subreddit, which is essentially what it is.
- nicholasreed 12y agoYou've been here for almost a year. Have you read the guidelines for HN? Specifically "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." In general, comments in this community move the discussion forward. I'd argue that your original comment added nothing to the discussion and was not intended to, which was the reason I downvoted it.
- fmstephe 12y agoI doubt that anyone was offended. But you will find a very strong negative reaction to jokes in the comments. I think there is a (very wise) desire to avoid a reddit type culture that rewards extended jokes and similar things. This may well be the community for you, but just be aware that a lot of people are justifiably frightened of what can happen to online communities. I think a good rule of thumb would be 'would be a waste of someone's time to read this comment'. People value the possibility that we can learn valuable things on Hacker News, but that becomes impossible if you have to wade through layers and layers of pointless jokes. Not intending to be unwelcoming, but I think it can be a surprise.
- zincoontrin 12y agoPutting out a gas fire with a nuclear explosion... what can go wrong?
- sliverstorm 12y agoWell, it's got the word "nuclear" in it, so obviously doomsday is the only possible result.
- baddox 12y agoI know some nuclear families that are disasters waiting to happen.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoThe fire is the least of your worries there.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- zincoontrin 12y agoPutting out a gas fire with a nuclear explosion... what can go wrong?
- jfb 12y agoThis puts me mind of Herzog's fantastic documentary, Lessons Of Darkness [1], about the crews putting out the oil well fires in Kuwait. Also, the Door To Hell [2] in Turkmenistan. [1] http://www.fandor.com/films/lessons_of_darkness http://www.fandor.com/films/lessons_of_darkness [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell
- abruzzi 12y agothe odd thing about the Herzog film though is that it includes a narration that casts the images into a kind of scifi story unrelated to Kuwait/Iraq, rather than a documentary. The filming is amazing though.
- jfb 12y agoHerzog has this concept of the ecstatic truth, which means his documentaries are rarely as simple as they can seem; it's almost a third form of film. I'm an unabashed fanboy, but in any event, Lessons Of Darkness is highly, highly recommended.
- rdtsc 12y agoLike gp also said, his narration is also hypnotizing. It's pacing is like a metronome. Induces some sort of a trance. Weeks after watching his films (for example The Cave Of The Forgotten Dreams) I would talk in his voice in my head.
- ggchappell 12y ago> ... it's almost a third form of film. What are the other two?
- tptacek 12y agoI'm presuming "documentary" and "narrative".
- 12y ago
- aganders3 12y agoThe US proposed many peaceful uses of nuclear explosives, mostly in the 60s. The catchall term for these proposals was "Project Plowshare" or "Operation Plowshare" [0]. > And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more - Isaiah 2:3-5 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare
- AbraKdabra 12y agoActually, controlled explosions are the best strategy against big fires.
- johnnygasgoine 12y agoWhat do you mean "actually"? This whole article is about how a controlled explosion was the best strategy against a big fire, and then you rock up and chime in with "actually controlled explosions are the best strategy against big fires". Duh! That's what the article was talking about! It's like everyone was talking about how the sky is blue, and you come along as say "actually the sky is blue".
- matthiasb 12y agoI believe nuclear charges are not only used to stop spill but also to release natural resources. However I did not find a reputable source of information to confirm that.
- FreakyT 12y agoYou might be thinking of the natural gas stimulation experiments performed by the US in the 70s[1]. From that article, "it was found that the three blast cavities had not connected as hoped, and the resulting gas still contained unacceptable levels of radionuclides" so it never went past the experimentation phase. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare#Natural_gas_stimulation_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare#Natural_ga...
- tptacek 12y agoEric Schlosser's _Command and Control_ is an eye-opening read on this subject. It's hard to fathom how seemingly cavalier the US and USSR were about nuclear explosions in the decades after their invention. Nuclear landmines! Nuclear rifles!
- whyenot 12y agoThe US also had several plans for using nuclear explosions for non-military purposes: The project team wanted to blow a path for a railway line through California’s Bristol Mountains; they wanted to use nukes to expand the Panama Canal; and they wanted to use underwater explosions to carve out a harbor in Alaska. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-once-wanted-to-use-nuclear-bombs-as-a-construction-tool-1957380/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-once-wanted-...
- suprgeek 12y agoUnfortunately the mere mention of "Nuclear" is a trigger word for most people, which is a tragedy considering that due to all the mistakes that were made in the past we have started to (finally) move to safer ways of using Nuclear Power. If we were realists about Nuclear energy like other forms of energy, we should have been entering a golden age of Nuclear right about now.
- sjtrny 12y agoA golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
- girvo 12y agoHonestly, I'd rather deal with nuclear waste than I would what we're currently doing to our environment.
- danwiding 12y agoA modest proposal would be to slowly depopulate Micronesia and store all our radioactive waste there (we already tested nukes there once anyway). It's either that or let the ocean reclaim the islands over the next 100 years. So we might as well get some cheap energy out of the deal.
- kalms 12y agoFire that crap into the sun and be done with it.
- chadgeidel 12y agoYou are getting downvoted without explanation here. It's a reasonable thought except for a few things. First of which is our space launch and delivery systems aren't 100% reliable. Even one failure means nuclear debris spread over a wide distance - something that would be very difficult to recover from. I couldn't find a good document from a quick googling, but this was high on the list: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2013.html http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2013.html 81 launches and 3 failures. I don't particularly like those odds.
- antimora 12y agoWhen I saw the date and the location of Uzbekistan, I thought it was related to the huge earthquake (7.5) of 1966 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. But it looks like the bomb was exploded in September but the earthquake was in April. More about this earthquake: http://www.tashkent-info.narod.ru/en/e_ze.htm http://www.tashkent-info.narod.ru/en/e_ze.htm
- photorized 12y agoThis reminds me of my visit to Centralia, PA, where the underground fire has been burning since 1962. Took lots of interesting pictures. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
- justincormack 12y agoBurning mountain has been on fire for 6,000 years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain
- forrestthewoods 12y agoVideo says no radiation detected at surface. What is the effect of the radiation underground? How long until the gas is harvestable from a new well?
- robotresearcher 12y ago> Video says no radiation detected at surface. Soviet Russia was not big on detecting radiation in public.
- enlightenedfool 12y agoThe big countries had their way with peaceful nuclear technology. Now, the smaller/weak ones are denied their own nuclear research and tech. forced to buy tech from the rich or get sanctioned to oblivion.
- venomsnake 12y agoYep. Life isn't fair.
- gcb0 12y ago> "no radioactivity above background levels was detected at the surface of the ground during post-shot surveys." the wording on that makes me very suspicious of what was found "under surface of the ground" after they resumed drilling the gas/oil... Edit: yep. apparently this is Public Relations Speak. The wikipedia for the US plowshare tests do mention that all gas they extracted after using nukes to open way had very high levels of radiation and they could only be used in a few industrial places.
- RoryH 12y agoReminded me of this cool invention.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E16g1_ibpBM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E16g1_ibpBM
- wahern 12y agoSuddenly the scenes in the movie Hellfighters (1968) (starring John Wayne) don't seem so dangerous or exciting. Somebody should do a reboot, but using a nuclear bomb instead of TNT. (Although in terms of safety I suppose I'd much rather be on team nuclear than team TNT. But Hollywood can add the requisite tension and danger.)