Deepwater Oil Spill - using a nuclear weapon

While the likelihood of using a nuclear weapon to shut off flow to the leaking oilwell in the Gulf are absolutely zero, nevertheless, under a different circumstance it did work in the Soviet Union. This video of that event shows it happening. Thanks, Rune.

Tapping into the riser in the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill

The initial success that BP has obtained in inserting a 4-inch pipe into the broken riser that leads from the leaking well in the Gulf, is not yet clearly evident. Although the pipe has been inserted, and oil and natural gas are being carried to the surface, the full capacity of the system has not yet been tested. The intent is to slowly increase the volume of fluids carried to the surface, so as to define the limits of what is achievable. The official statement for the day notes that:

Secretary Salazar and Secretary Napolitano issued a joint statement on these efforts: “Today, BP attempted another test to contain some of the oil leaking from the riser. This technique is not a solution to the problem, and it is not yet clear how successful it may be. We are closely monitoring BP’s test with the hope that it will contain some of the oil, but at the same time, federal scientists are continuing to provide oversight and expertise to BP as they move forward with other strategies to contain the spill and stop the flow of oil. We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole.”

MMS reports the Development Driller III, which will drill the first relief well, has finished running blowout preventer (BOP) stack and riser and is currently latching the BOP to the wellhead for the first relief well. The Development Driller II, which will drill the second relief well, is on location and is making preparations for initiating the drilling process and performing BOP maintenance.

The hope is that the pipe that has been inserted in the riser 600 ft from the BOP will be able to capture all the oil and gas that was leaking from that particular part of the riser. This had earlier been estimated to be up to 85% of the total spill. The remainder is coming from a smaller leak closer to the BOP, and which will likely only be sealed when the well is killed using the injection of heavy mud later in the week.


It is a little difficult to tell, as yet, whether the pipe will be able to carry all this fluid. In order to control the flow to the surface there is a choke in the line, and this provides a variable resistance to the flow of fluid out of the riser. This additional resistance gives an additional driving pressure to the contained fluid that will increase the flow from the remaining leak, and can also provide some pressure for the fluid to ease past the rubber seals that surround the relief pipe in the riser. Engineers will thus have to strike a careful balance in controlling the pressure, and thus the flow up the pipe, relative to capturing all the possible oil and gas that leaves the riser.

The size of the operation to kill the well is also now becoming apparent. The mud pumps that will drive the mud into the BOP, with the intent of stopping the flow by weighting up the column above the reservoir, and then allowing a concrete plug to be inserted.

The mud would be pumped at more than 30,000 horsepower through three-inch hoses and through "choke" valves at the bottom of the blowout preventer near the seafloor. Wells said the valves could shoot as much as 40 barrels of mud a minute into the well.

"We'll be able to pump much faster than the well can flow," he said. "It's about us outrunning the well."
Wells said the company had brought 50,000 barrels of the mud, a mixture of clay and other substances, for the effort, which he said should be far more than needed. He said that the much-ridiculed "junk shot," in which golf balls and shredded tires would be fired into the blowout preventer, would be used only if the drilling mud were being forced upward and needed to be blocked.

The problem in introducing a fluid into a rapidly moving stream, is that the stream will tend to carry the newly injected fluid along with it. There is some resistance to the fluid flow within the BOP itself, given that the cylinders at least partially functioned. They began by closing off the well, but the collapse of the riser, and the possible erosion induced by sand in the fluid flow has eaten out the initial pathway through the BOP to allow the current flow volume escape.

If the leak is at 5,000 bd, then the current flow out through the BOP is roughly 3.5 barrels a minute. That is as much as can get through the orifice in the BOP at the driving pressure coming from the bottom of the well. When the pumps kick the additional 40 barrels a minute into that flow passage, the resistance to the higher flow will be much greater through the BOP than down the well, and so the mud should reverse the flow in the well and start to flow down the well.

This is, of course, where it now gets very tricky since too much pressure in the well can cause the cement and rock at the bottom of the well to fracture, allowing the potential for a much higher flow into the well at that point. Given that the next step, however, if the well flow can be stopped by the weight and pressure of the mud injected into the well, will be to pump a significant concrete plug into the well to totally and permanently block the well, there is likely little concern at this point as to what will occur down at the shoe of the casing.

In passing I see that the makeup of the “dream team” that the Government has put together to help with the crisis has now been revealed.

In recent days, the Obama administration has assembled a "dream team" of scientists to deal with the leak, including experts in robotics, physics, X-ray technology and the hydrogen bomb. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, met with BP engineers in Houston last week and promised that the "intellectual horsepower of the country is engaged in solving this problem."

But unlike many science and engineering problems that can be worked out in a lab or on a blackboard, this one is unfolding far from the reach of a human hand, in real time, with a potentially high penalty for failure.

"It's not just theory. It's reality that has to be dealt with," said Henry Petroski, a Duke University professor of civil engineers and history. "This is a really tough problem."

It’s that hydrogen bomb expertise that has me worried.
I thought that Joel Achenbach had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote about the possibility of using a nuclear bomb on the well in the WP but he quoted the success of the Russians in doing this, and as I have noted in an earlier post so maybe all that brainpower is focusing on a more immediate answer. The President, after all, is getting impatient.

Test results from nuclear stimulation of oil and gas reservoirs

Hmmm! Well the tone of some the comments on my last post -dealing with nuclear development of oil shale,, both recently and when I initially posted it on TOD helps illustrate one of the points that I want to make in this, a continuation in the posts on oil shale. The tone was quite negative, in general, with a number of folk being disturbed at my even bringing it up. It points to the fact that, as a political reality (bearing in mind that I try to stick to technical matters in this series) the use of nuclear adjustment to the local geology is not likely going to be popular. As tstreet noted after the original post, there is an article in the Colorado Constitution (article XXVI) that he helped put in there.

Section 1. Nuclear detonations prohibited exceptions. No nuclear explosive device may be detonated or placed in the ground for the purpose of detonation in this state except in accordance with this article. (Adopted by the People, November 5, 1974. Effective upon proclamation of the Governor, December 20, 1974.)

Section 2. Election required. Before the emplacement of any nuclear explosive device in the ground in this state, the detonation of that device shall first have been approved by the voters through enactment of an initiated or referred measure authorizing that detonation, such measure having been ordered, proposed, submitted to the voters, and approved as provided in section 1 of article V of this constitution. (Adopted by the People, November 5, 1974 Effective upon proclamation of the Governor, December 20, 1974.)

While I did not know about that as I initially planned this series, I had intended just to point out that the unhappiness of just one Senator with a nuclear program (and I was thinking of Senator Reid and Yucca Mountain) can delay and ultimately kill its implementation. In this case it is likely that there would be at least eight senators opposing, and I think the point is made. However, since I do think it is useful for folk to know these things, I thought I would continue with the rest of the story from a technical point of view. Particularly since the use of nuclear energy for excavation has recently been revisited by WIRED magazine.


Following the debates about the potential benefits that might occur from the use of nuclear explosives it was decided to see if it would work in three test detonations, that were given the names Gasbuggy ; Rulison and Rio Blanco.

The Gasbuggy shot, in 1967 used a 29 KT device at a depth of a 4,240 ft deep shaft, and created a cavity that was 80 ft wide and 335 ft tall, when one included the chimney. It also fractured the light shale around the opening. Anticipated dimensions were 165 ft with a 350 ft chimney.

The Rulison shot, in 1969, used a 43 KT device at a depth of 8,426 ft. it produced a cavity that was 152 ft wide, with a fracture zone that extends some 200 ft into the surrounding sandstone. (Predicted size was 160 ft with a 300 ft chimney). It is interesting to note that contractors have sought to drill near that shot, in order to extract gas from the shale. They were initially restricted to drilling no closer than half a mile. That was back in 2004, but interest in drilling at the site has continued. In the latest development Noble Energy Production is planning on drilling some 78 wells near the site, with DOE apparently having plans to drill closer than the half-mile imposition, though the wells planned in this case are all more than 1.5 miles from the site. The County Commissioners are not amused And, lest there be some concern for gas released at the time, let me quote from the article.

All the gas freed by the nuclear blast was produced and burned off at the surface, Bennetts said. The radioactivity at the site wasn't high to begin with, and since has decreased to below background levels, he said.

The blast formed a sealed cavity underground, according to state and federal authorities. "Even if you drilled a well into that cavity again, there's very little radioactivity remaining to be produced," Bennetts said.

There was some measure of the gas produced

Following the blast, in 1970 and 1971, the companies burned off, or "flared," 430 million cubic feet of gas into the open sky. The commission said that the level of radioactivity in the air surrounding the site did not exceed normal background levels.

Rio Blanco, shot in 1973, was made up of a series of 3 30-KT devices stacked up the shaft, at a depth of 7,000 ft, with the devices actually at 5,840; 6,230 and 6,670 ft. Each device created a cavity that was some 120 ft in diameter, and about 250 ft high. (Against predictions of a 140 ft diameter with a 300 ft chimney.) Fractures from the explosions extended about 200 ft into the rock around the shaft.

The production of gas from the shots was reported to be less than had been anticipated and the levels of radiation higher, so that while the volume of gas that could have been collected "would have been commercially viable," that only held true had the gas been uncontaminated. It was not.

Interestingly there have also been tests of this technology in the Former Soviet Union and when I wrote about gas fires in Turkmenistan there was a comment by Syndroma who posted pictures of devices, which I am reposting here. Also noting

As to extinguishing of gas fountains: 1 in Turkmenistan, 2 in Uzbekistan, 1 in Ukraine (objective not achieved). Also in Ukraine, there was 0.3 kt explosion to alter the geology of coal mine, to make it safer for the miners. Objective achieved. Later, coal was extracted up to 70 meters from the chamber. No excess radioactivity detected.

Of ~150 peaceful explosion only 4 turned out "nasty" (contamination of the surface).

Soviet weapons that could be used in gas and oil well stimulation (from Wonderful Russia via Syndroma)

Syndroma also posted pictures of the result of three shots to generate a trench which I am also moving here. This was the model of the crater:

And this was the resulting crater that was achieved.

Results of the excavation when 3 nuclear devices were used to excavate a trench in the Soviet Union (Syndroma) (You can see the site on Google Earth at 61 18 16.93, 56 35 55.77)

There is more information on the Soviet Program here.

However our purpose is to look at the development of reserves and their contribution to the marketplace within the foreseeable future. Particularly within the next fifteen years, when we can assume that the shortages of supply will become evident, it can, I think, be realistically assumed that there can be no use of nuclear devices to enhance oil shale recovery out West.

At the same time, the toughness of the rock its strength and behavior under mechanical attack make machine mining of the shale a likely impracticality on a sufficient scale to produce perhaps much more than 100,000 barrels a day within that time frame. That judgment on my part is based also on the need to regenerate the capital for the program, reconstruct the facilities and get through all the necessary paperwork.

There are alternate methods for mining the material, including those that are used in conventional metal mining of large-scale surface and underground deposits. However, the mining of something that can generate high levels of potentially explosive gases, if very large scale fracturing and blasting is undertaken, creates levels of risk that will make development of such plans a lengthy process if carried out underground. The mining of Gilsonite for example, was only realistically achieved when the hydrocarbon was mined using high pressure waterjets. But the strength of the oil shale makes the conventional use of that technique impractical - even if it were allowable, which is conjectural.

With these prospects being diminished, the only likely potential for oil shale to have a significant impact in the next fifteen years is likely to be either through some smaller scale in-situ retorting or possibly through a surface mining approach . I will discuss these in the next two posts on the subject.