
Ask HN: As a non-expert, what would you do to solve the oil leak in the Gulf? - ImFatYoureFat
You're not an idiot, what ideas have you thought of for fixing the leak that you haven't heard being suggested elsewhere?<p>(This question was inspired by the debate over whether news updates on the status of repairs were HN appropriate.)
======
GiraffeNecktie
I don't understand why BP's people think that you can just shove some heavy
gunk into the hole and expect it to stay there. Common sense would suggest
that you'd have to start by anchoring something inside the hole which you
could use to build a progressively denser matrix. How the hell you do that at
30,000 feet underwater I don't know. Depending on the state of the hole
perhaps you could put a hollow, expandable cylinder into the hole. The
cylinder also would have a series of hinged blades that could be released and
the pressure of the oil would force the blades together and close the leak.
Hard to explain without drawing a diagram. Since it's an obvious solution I
would guess that there's a good technical reason why it can't be done.

~~~
anigbrowl
Getting a cylinder _into_ the hole seems difficult. An earlier attempt called
the 'top hat' involved putting a capped cylinder on top of the hole but
apparently methane hydrates, which are lighter than water, started
accumulating inside it and it kept lifting off the seabed.

So my idea is halfway between the two: place a large, weighted concrete
cylinder with no end caps above the hole - a hollow top hat, if you like. It
needs to be big, like 25' x 25' or larger; height is more important than
diameter. This in itself does nothing to stem the flow - but nor does it
obstruct it. So the cylinder can then be sealed around the bottom and fixed to
the seabed without interference from the pressure of the outrushing oil.

Then one can begin filling the cylinder with gravel or whatever is suitable -
smallest material first, working up to rocks. As we begin covering the gusher,
the pressure will obviously push some of the filler material out of the
way...but as it's inside a cylinder, the filler is just going to get pushed
against the side of the cylinder, where its weight is going to increase the
downward pressure on the material at the bottom, which has nowhere to go
except in towards the center. When the aggregate pressure at the bottom of the
cylinder from the sides into the center exceeds the pressure of the oil, it
will pinch off the flow, like a valve. This of course assumes perfect packing
of the filler material; in reality the oil will diffuse through it, but in
doing so the pressure will be distributed across the diameter of the cylinder,
which will make it much easier to cap.

Or we could just go with Andy Borowitz's suggestion to plug the whole with BP
executives....

~~~
mechanical_fish
_the pressure will be distributed across the diameter of the cylinder_

Okay, I was skeptical about this thread when I first saw it, but now I see the
awesome potential for teaching physics here.

You can't "diffuse the pressure". At every point along the wall of a sealed
vessel, the pressure is constant. So if, e.g., the pressure of the hole when
sealed would be 100 PSI, then to stop it every square inch of the seal needs
to withstand that 100 PSI.

If the top of your concrete cylinder has, say, 100 times the area of the hole,
then the _flow_ of oil may end up evenly distributed over that area. But if
you then try to seal the top you must now provide the same strength of seal --
it must withstand the same pressure -- over a much larger area, which is
probably _harder_ to accomplish.

This seems counterintuitive, just as the lever is counterintuitive. But we use
this principle all the time to lift things like elevators and cars. You push
on a tiny-diameter cylinder with your arms (or with a little electric motor),
and it pumps fluid into a much larger-diameter cylinder under the car, and the
car rises. Of course, you have to pump up and down dozens or hundreds of times
to lift the car one inch.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I should also note that the idea of blocking the hole with gravel isn't
exactly a bad one. You're right to point out that if you use big pebbles for
your gravel the oil will just squeeze through the abundant empty spaces. So...
use finer gravel!

The pressure will try to push the gravel out. So maybe make it really sticky
gravel, so that it glues itself together.

Now there are three things to say about this plan:

(a) we call this sticky, very fine gravel _concrete_ and we use it all the
time;

(b) a fun educational point: Even with really _fine_ gravel, oil can still
diffuse through it. Oil diffuses through "solid" rock all the time. The oil
underground is actually trapped inside rock. The rock that holds the oil is
relatively porous; the oil is kept underground because above that rock is a
layer of denser rock that oil can't diffuse through very well.

(c) In case it isn't obvious yet: The reason your idea still doesn't work very
well is that the first cupful of wet concrete you pour onto the hole will
promptly get flushed away by the pressure of the leaking oil. ;) As will
_every successive cupful_ of wet concrete. Unfortunately, a giant slab of
solid concrete must necessarily start out life as a thin layer of wet
concrete, so the only way to put a concrete seal over a hole that is actively
leaking is to cast it someplace else and then drop it on the hole.

~~~
superk
Actually an interesting point. What would happen if they cast a stadium sized
block of concrete and dropped it on the hole.

~~~
stcredzero
It would go around.

------
waivej
I would think that some sort of suction could draw up enough mixture to
minimize the problem. For example, 5,000 barrels a day is 145 gallons per
minute. ($3500 = 10hp 145gpm pump)

I would think that they could hook a giant pump onto one or more pipes and
collect it somehow. At 145gpm, it would take 7000 years to fill up one of the
super tankers.

Likewise, I wonder if they could put a heater on the top hat pipe. Maybe the
oil is thick at that temp/pressure. Or maybe there are ice crystals, but it
seems like they could solve that somehow. We have wires up North to thaw
frozen pipes. Shop vacs have larger diameter hoses to not get clogged so
easily. Maybe they could bundle lots of smaller pipes together.

Ironically, I accidentally poured a few cups of oil into my truck's coolant
reservoir. I thought it would all float to the surface, but lots of it just
stayed at the bottom. Blowing bubbles into the tank made it float up sort of
like the bubble "pumps" in a fish aquarium.

At this point, they should just create a contest and let school kids come up
with ideas.

~~~
superk
Firstly latest estimates are between 12k and 19k barrels x day
([http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?pagewanted...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?pagewanted=2&hp)).
That's 350 - 554 gpm. If a super oil tanker can hold 2m barrels you'd fill one
up with greasy, slushy water in between 105 - 166 days
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker>).

~~~
JimmyL
So why not do it?

Find a few empty supertankers (which I'm certain BP can round up if they need
to), mount a bunch of large industrial pumps on top of each one, plant them
strategically around the leak site, and start sucking up the oil-water mixture
from the surface (and stop with the dispersant - we want the oil to stay
together in this scenario). Once they're full in a week or so, bring another
three or four supertankers in to take over. Meanwhile, send the full ones to a
nearby port, offload the oil-water mixture, and deal with processing it to
separate out the oil and the water there. We won't get all the oil; if we're
lucky, maybe 75%. But whatever that percentage is, it's miles better than what
we're getting now.

This is apparently what was done in the early nineties off the coast of Saudi
Arabia when they had a similar problem. I'm not saying this would be cheap -
supertankers and pumps don't grow on trees - but BP needs to fix this and show
they're making a good efforts. Plus, you could probably recover a good deal of
the oil as a part of the onshore processing and sell it like any other oil.

~~~
superk
Yeah... your comment about supertankers growing on trees is way understated in
regards to BP being able to round up a few empty ones in less time than it
will take to drill the relief wells.

------
Confusion
Beware of mistaking intelligence for knowledge. If you don't really know
anything about the subject matter, you are likely to overlook all kinds of
relevant details, making your intelligent solution pretty much useless. If, in
addition to being intelligent, you aren't aware of your lack of knowledge, you
may get the tendency to think everyone that couldn't come up with your
'obvious' solution is a fool, which leads others to turn away and rant like
<http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/>

~~~
bertm
Beware of mistaking knowledge for intelligence.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1369781>

------
akmad
If there is one thing that playing video games over the couple of decades has
taught me it's that there is NOTHING that a well placed nuke cannot fix.

That is all.

~~~
mkramlich
And movies taught it's probably the best way to deal with aliens:

"I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be
sure." \- Ripley

------
nw
If I were BP, I would post online detailed specs of the physics and equipment
in play, in tandem with a massive cash prize for an original idea leading to
the successful plugging of the leak.

~~~
anigbrowl
I like the idea of crowdsourcing it, but can't help feeling that a
sufficiently original idea wouldn't be recognized as feasible.

------
gruseom
I've heard from more than one petroleum engineer that the only thing likely to
work is relief wells and that all the rest of this is theatre. If that's true,
it's a politically impossible truth, which would explain much of what we've
seen so far.

Apparently all the same techniques (the cap, the top kill) were tried 30 years
ago -- in much shallower water -- and didn't work then either. What worked was
a relief well. If that precedent holds, then we're barely past the beginning
of this catastrophe. I hope that's not true, but it's beginning to look that
way.

~~~
adammichaelc
Can you explain "relief wells?"

edit: found this [http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-
spill/index.ssf/2010/05/gr...](http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-
spill/index.ssf/2010/05/graphic_shows_status_of_relief.html) "BP is drilling
two relief wells, which will permanently intersect with the damaged well and
shut down the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico by pumping concrete into
it."

So a relief well is a new well that intersects with current wells and allows
concrete to be flowed to the current wells. Can anybody elaborate? Why would
it be political suicide to come out and say, "This is the only viable option.
Here are the pros, here are the cons. This is our best option. Now let's get
to work."

~~~
fragmede
They started drilling the relief well in early May -
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB4000142405274870434260457522...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748704342604575221943592328492.html)
.

I can't find a time frame on how long the relief well would take, I suspect a
while. (It took 9 months for the first well to come online in the Ixtoc 1
spill, and even then it took another 3 months for the flow to subside). The
political suicide comes from human nature needing to see _something_ being
done. "Uh, so we have a fix in place. Oh yeah, it's gonna take a year to
work." "So what do we do now?" "Wait."

------
ImFatYoureFat
So to get started, my uneducated suggestion is that they put a giant cylinder
over the leak so as to at least contain the oil as it rises to the surface. I
understand the problems with depth and pressure so ideally there is some
fabric that is highly mailable (plastic, rubber, etc.)

With little background in physics I would think that the pressure of the oil's
need to rise to the surface would exceed the pressure of the water's need to
collapse the cylinder.

Criticism of this or any other idea is more than welcome.

~~~
Ixiaus
I would imagine just "putting a cylinder" over the leak would not contain it.
To begin with, the floor of the ocean isn't a solid surface, there's a lot of
mud which means the opening to the hole isn't "clean cut" - any kind of "well"
uses an inner sleeve so that you can connect a pipe to the "hole". That's
usually where the blowout preventers would go, I imagine, would be in the
sleeve inside the hole. So, the opening to the well is probably pretty muddy
and unstable.

When that well blew out it popped off the connecting pipe and began releasing
thousands of barrels of oil at very high pressures. Even if the "hole" were
clean cut and they could easily mount a fitting to it, the pressure alone
would make it extremely difficult (try turning the garden faucet on high and
then connecting a hose to it, possible, but rather difficult).

This is why blowout preventers exist, if a blowout happens the well is sealed
from inside itself (as I understand it). I think it is ridiculous that
mandatory blowout preventers never made it into law. Bright side of it is this
incident will (or should) inspire reform.

I think everything they are doing is about as much as you can do at that depth
with such high pressure.

~~~
moe
Extending on the cylinder idea, how about a cone?

My naive thinking would be a cone with a large diameter and a relatively small
hole at the top. Plug a hose (or rather a pipe) into that hole and suck off
the oil into tankers faster than it would push out on the sides at the bottom
of the cone.

This could surely not catch all of the stream, but perhaps a worthwhile
percentage?

~~~
ars
They tried that. The cone floated away.

The oil is much lighter than water. Plus it has methane which is even lighter
than that.

------
adriand
I would call a press conference where I would carefully explain that it was
someone else's fault.

------
saikat
Not sure if anyone else saw this clip on the Rachel Maddow show, but it was
interesting. Seems like the last time something this massive happened (in much
shallower water), the same techniques were tried (and failed) and finally,
relief wells were the solution - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo>

~~~
cj
Too bad that drilling takes months.

------
ElbertF
I'd use a regular expression. I solve all my problems with regex.

~~~
xtho
%s/oil//g

Done.

~~~
natrius
Except now you've _globally_ eliminated oil.

~~~
xtho
I assumed that only the Gulf of Mexico was loaded in the current buffer, not
the world. The operation also had the side-effects of preventing any turmoils.

~~~
stcredzero
Reducing global warming, but massively disrupting the plastics industry. Would
ve economic disaster.

------
vaksel
I actually had to deal with something similar at home.

Granted it was flowing water, but same principle.

Anyways what you do is use an open hose and some hose clamps on the leaking
pipe, then you direct the oil hose where you want it to go. Since there is no
resistance on the other end, the oil will just go through without any pressure
build up. And by using a hose clamp on the leak, it doesn't go elsewhere.

Then you can point the hose whereever, maybe park an oil tanker nearby, and
pipe directly into it. Then you build a platform that uses a Y valve to divert
oil between multiple vessels without spilling.

Here is a diagram: <http://imgur.com/4m2GY.jpg>

------
gibsonf1
There is always the Russian solution - a nuclear bomb (I think they actually
did this, and I think it was successful - hate to see what happened to the
surrounding wildlife though) [http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russian-paper-
suggests-nucl...](http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russian-paper-suggests-
nuclear-explosion-cut-gulf-oil-geyser/)

~~~
fleitz
When people have a problem they think "I know I'll use nuclear weapons", now
they have two problems.

~~~
cj
I wouldn't rule out controlled nuclear explosions until I found out whether
the HUGE amount of oil leaking out every minute is more or less harmful to the
environment than the would-be radiation.

~~~
fleitz
Yes, but this assumes that using nuclear explosions will improve the situation
rather than make it worse.

------
Gatsky
To confirm, the sea floor is 5000ft below the surface, and the oil reservoir
18000 feet below that.

There are some good diagrams at NYT and washington post:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/graphic/2010/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/graphic/2010/05/25/GR2010052504985.html?sid=ST2010052903349)
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-to...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-topkill-
diagram.html)

Funny that the outlet on top of the cap they tried to lower over the leak
became clogged with some kind of ice/methane crystal mix.

The junk shot/top kill didn't work... as far as I can tell, the mud just
sprayed out the top of the broken, bent pipe. Taking blood coagulation as an
analogy, there is a complex system of aggregation to form a clot and then
strengthen at a breach in an arterial wall - this isn't exactly replicated by
what they used in the junk shot, apparently a mixture of mud, golf balls and
car tyres.

One idea would be to try something else for a junk shot that would actually
change the flow characteristics of the oil such as glue, or liquid nitrogen.
Mind you, this stuff gets pumped into bottom of the blow out preventer, and
the leak is at the top 30ft away. That isn't very much time to change the
viscosity of the oil. You would also need a very large volume of this junk
shot material... Alternatively, maybe junk shooting with a pile of rare earth
magnets could do the trick, assuming the pipe is ferromagnetic.

Also there is still the sea-floor to surface pipe attached to the top of the
blowout preventer, albeit bent off at an angle. You could thread something
through the post breach pipe back towards the main breach and try to plug it
that way.

The coolest solution I can think of is to fire a copper slug down the throat
of the bastard thing with a surface mounted rail gun.

------
jimfl
A rhombic triacontahedron can be formed out of "bricks" which are truncated
versions of projections from the polyhedral faces to the center. Make these
out of cement, and build a half dome around the well head. The pressure of the
water should hold the bricks together with more force than the pressure of the
well.

------
superk
Why cap it? Better to put a turbine down there and start generating
electricity from the all natural hydro-petro-electric source!

~~~
fleitz
If you could inject oxygen into the stream you could burn it off at the same
time.

------
RevRal
I sat here for about five minutes thinking about this, and this really is
beyond me.

But I do have this picture in my head of throwing a bunch of gigantic
parachute things into the water. Perhaps with tubes in their centers that lead
to the surface. Or, throw so many parachutes down that it creates a canopy
that directs where the oil goes. Or put some kind of super heating devices on
these things and I don't really know what that would do....

Or they can build a huge cone from the surface downward.

Like you said, I'm no expert.

~~~
jarin
They already tried something similar in concept (the dome), but the gases
froze and clogged it all up. I'm sure the same thing would happen with
canopies.

~~~
ars
It didn't clog up. It floated away.

~~~
danielharan
hmmm... so I'll suggest something that doesn't trap everything. Overlapping
partial domes if you will; the objective really is to get as much of that oil
out as possible.

------
notaclue
I am sure there is no way I can explain this, but you all seem pretty smart,
so here goes. What if they created a chamber using a larger diameter cylinder,
say 10" larger than the pipe coming from the well head. There would be a hole
in the bottom which is exactly the outside diameter of the broken pipe on the
well head. The top of the chamber is left open at this point. The chamber is
placed over the well head and welded into place while the oil continues to
spew out the open top. The top of the chamber would have braces welded to it
which would act sort of like drawer glides. An example would be like how the
top of a cigar box slides into grooves cut in the sides. These braces would
act like the grooves in the cigar box. But obviously with a lot more surface
area to hold the pressure of the flow.A top could be slid into place, cutting
off the oil flow and held there by the braces. The top is then welded or
bolted to the chamber. The top could have a pipe with a valve installed that
would connect to the ship above to capture the oil while the valve would
control the flow. Anyway, I'm no engineer and I actually may be an idiot, but
it's just a thought I had. Fire away.....

------
WalterBright
For the time being, just try to put pipes into the plume and pump it into
tanker ships. Even getting 10% will help.

~~~
mkramlich
I thought of that too and liked the fact that it was so simple to implement
compared to the other options, even if it would be hard to get 100%
containment. It also has the benefit that it is physically similar to what
they have to do with the oil under all-is-working-fine conditions. Therefore,
it is similar to something they already have lots of experience doing
successfully.

And btw if you are Empire/D Walter Bright I'm a big fan of your work. :)

------
mixmax
I would weld a flange around the outside of the pipe a bit below where it's
broken. This shouldn't be a problem since there's no oil under pressure coming
out there.

Then I would make a contraption consisting of three parts:

1) similar flange to the one on the ocean floor that can be bolted on to the
one welded on the pipe

2) a cylinder welded on top of the flange

3) some sort of closing mechanism on top of the cylinder.

Get divers (or ROV's) down to attach the contraption to the pipe by bolting
the two flanges together. This should be possible since the oil will just rise
out of the cylinder, so the pressure of the oil shouldn't be a problem. When
the contraption is secured activate the closing mechanism.

The only requirement here is that you can weld something onto the pipe below
where the leak is. I don't know whether that's possible at that depth though.

~~~
JshWright
It would pretty much have to be ROVs (or manned sub, I suppose). 5,000ft is
_way_ deeper than you can SCUBA dive.

~~~
fleitz
I thought the BOP was 30,000 feet down or is that the length of the bore hole?
I've been fairly ignorant as to paying in depth attention to the whole
debacle.

~~~
pasbesoin
IIRC, from memory, the well head is at circa 5200 feet and the borehole
extends from there circa 18,200 feet further, to a short distance below the
intended production zone. (I may be mis-remembering.)

------
cromulent
Drill new wells next to it, into the same source, to remove the oil and
pressure in a controlled way.

~~~
frankus
That's basically what the "relief well" plan is, but it's taking a couple of
months to get there.

I think the trick is that it needs to be intercepted deep enough into bedrock
to not risk having the whole BOP crater.

------
drhodes
There are two inlets (link to pic below). Pump a slurry of mineral oil,
aluminum pellets, and elemental sodium on one side. On the other pump sea
water. The chemical reaction looks like: 2Na + 2H2O -> H2 + 2NaOH, and a whole
lot of heat that might melt the aluminum just long enough to form blobs.
There's no O2 left over so combustion won't happen, right? -OR- maybe a two
part foam, with composite reinforcement would work.

[http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_u...](http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/images/TopKill_05-16-10_1750xvar.jpg)

------
dedward
I would immediately seek out, using all methods possible, anyone who could
reasonably be considered an expert on such issues (to my own satisfaction),
and find out their opinion.

Then I'd find out what my budget was, and who else I had to deal with
afterwards.

Etc...

~~~
jaybol
Your suggestion reminds me of the example in the book Wisdom of the Crowds (or
maybe it was Wikinomics or both)

"But managers did learn to type. And Goldcorp did use the internet to mine
gold: in 2000, it abandoned the industry's tradition of secrecy, making
thousands of pages of complex geological data available online, and offering
$575,000 in prize money to those who could successfully identify where on the
Red Lake property the undiscovered veins of gold might lie. Retired
geologists, graduate students and military officers around the world chipped
in. They recommended 110 targets, half of which Goldcorp hadn't previously
identified. Four-fifths of them turned out to contain gold. Since then, the
company's value has rocketed from $100m to $9bn, and disaster has been
averted."([http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/05/news.netric...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/05/news.netrich))

TL;DR Hey BP take advantage of someone who needs some cash more than you do in
order to find the solution

------
moultano
Defer to the experts.

~~~
ImFatYoureFat
Why?

How many times has this attitude been proven pointless and ineffective? As I
understand it one of the great things about "startup cultures" is the
utilization of the outsider's prospective. Why can't that mentality be applied
to this problem?

~~~
j_baker
I can only conclude that you do surgery on yourself because you aren't willing
to trust the experts.

~~~
ImFatYoureFat
I didn't want to side track to discussion into an argument over whether laymen
can think critically about complex issues or not but this is kind of a
ridicules accusation.

There is a great difference between not trusting experts (what you are
accusing me of) and having ideas of my own and asking others for their
opinions of my ideas.

I don't do surgery on myself but if I had a deadly uncured disease I would
question the doctor as to why various treatments won't work to cure me. In all
likelihood he would answers for all of my questions (which in itself would put
my mind at ease a little), but it is possible that he wouldn't have all the
answers (leading me to want a second opinion).

------
haily
I think BP should have dealt with the oil flowing up to the surface first.
They should bring in the massive tankers with big vacuums to suck the oil up.
This will buy them more time to fix the leaks below.

------
aarongough
I would drop a large inverted cone made of steel or concrete so that it's
point obscured the breach. The weight of the plug would keep the oil pressure
from pushing it out, while a stabilizing float attached to it's top would
prevent the cone from tipping over. Like so:

    
    
         |     < Line up to deploying ship
         O
         O     < Stabilizing float
         |
       -----   < Steel/concrete plug
       \   /
      __\ /__  < Breach
         V
    

Once it settled you could likely pour a block of cement around it...

~~~
mrtron
I think the pressure from the oil coming out would push the point of the cone
to the side.

Some modifications to your idea: Use a really long nose guidance rod of
titanium or something that is much smaller than the pipe diameter.

Have the plug have a new pipe running through it to allow the oil to gush
through, but then have a new kill valve after you seal the plug in place.

~~~
aarongough
I was going for the 'Big Dumb Booster' version... All beef and no brain!

I'm not sure whether the point would get pushed aside, but a guide rod
definitely wouldn't hurt!

I think at this point they should just seal the thing off rather than trying
to run additional plumbing into it...

------
meric
Hmm, since it has leaked so much oil already... I wonder what would be the
effects of just letting the well empty out. Make the hole really big so that
pressure is reduced, then the oil just floats to the top where you can collect
it all. Maybe a giant floating ring to contain the oil in the surface.

No idea how to deal with the `plumes`, though. <silly> Add detergent? </silly>

------
Sethnektochy
Discreetly sneak in there and run a pipeline off to your own storage facility
and open your own parasitic oil company. I propose a startup.

------
zitterbewegung
I remember reading about how atomic weapons detonated at the point of the leak
would seal it a few weeks ago.

More information at [http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-
just...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-just-drop-a-
nuclear-bomb-on-the-Gulf-oil-spill)

------
tumult
Start pouring millions of tons of sand. Might have an affect after a month or
two.

~~~
bbb
Setting off a massive explosion with the well at the center. Massive enough to
move sufficient amount of material towards the well to essentially clamp it
shut.

Of course, the oil would probably start leaking through the sand/rubble after
a few days.

This could be trivially solved by applying nuclear explosives to weld
everything shut, with the added benefit that local fishermen could stop to
worry whether they'll have a job again soon. </sarcasm>

~~~
fleitz
As far as I know nuclear devices tend to create massive holes rather than
welding. Perhaps it would be better to use our nuclear capacity for energy
generation and our petroleum for explosives, rather than vice versa.

At least if they use the nuke method no one will care about the oil spill
anymore whether it works or not.

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staunch
1) Put a big ass cap on the top of it 2) Try to choke it off by pumping in a
ton of junk. 3) Blow it up.

Those are truly ideas I had instantly. What's terrifying is that my ideas bare
any resemblance to the supposed experts's.

~~~
mkramlich
Likewise. I pretty quickly thought of the "suck the oil plumes into a tube,
draw up to surface" solution (at least as a stopgap) so was shocked that it
took BP about 3-4 _weeks_ before they put such a system in place. Weeks! Felt
like that should have been on site and implemented within hours or least the
first day or two after the leak began.

~~~
yankeeracer73
I suspect the issue is more the depths they're working at. At 5,000 feet down,
these "simple" solutions don't become so simple anymore.

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petercooper
I'd send in Juan Sheet to sort it out: <http://youtu.be/Xknub_pILt8> .. he
says "this spill is no match for me."

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horesetamer
a large rubber hose with one end capped off after they put in the pipe the can
inflate it to try to shut off the flow

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known
<http://twitter.com/TheOilDrum>

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blabla_oblama
Get the military to do it and invoice BP.

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jrockway
Create a time machine, go back in time, and build the oil well in such a way
as to not break like it did.

~~~
mkramlich
Someone in the future has already done that. But they won't emerge naked from
the chrono-portal, 1 year ago, until July our time this year. Also, when they
emerge naked from the chrono-portal they are immediately crushed and drowned
and eaten by deep sea crabs. Ouch, time travel hurts my head.

~~~
jrockway
I revise my plan to "wait for some time-travelers from the future to fix the
oil rig". That way we won't have to invent the time machine, which could use
up a lot of tax dollars that would be better-spent blowing up desert-dwellers
and bailing out failed investment banks.

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bdotdub
Don't want to be nitpicky, but its "you're", not "your". The irony is also a
bit funny

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mkramlich
The tactic of suctioning oil/water into a pipe/tube has the benefit of not
falling prey to many of the other problems (inability to form a seal,
temperate/freezing, needing fine-grained on-site human activity, etc.). Bring
the oil/water mix up to the surface, maybe filter it, dump it in a ship/tank
on the surface. Downside is it may be impossible to suck up 100% of the
leaking oil, but even getting 80% would be a huge improvement, and reduce
further damage to the sea. I believe they started doing it, then at least
temporarily stopped it to prepare for the top kill attempt.

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zeynel1
I have no idea how the broken pipe looks like, but cover it with an inverted
funnel connected to the remaining pipe to the surface. This way at least some
of the oil will be recovered.

