

Top kill animation from BBC - how BP oil well is being plugged - dctoedt
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10159626.stm

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mootothemax
To think, all it takes is a simple set of graphics like this and I think I
finally understand what this attempt is all about. Good work!

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what
CNN had Bill Nye The Science Guy explain it yesterday.

EDIT: Here's a link to the video, he comes on at about 1:40

[http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2010/05/25/jk.bill...](http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2010/05/25/jk.bill.nye.science.of.oil.cnn)

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bryanh
This is the only time I've ever been more impressed by CNN than by the BBC.

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mynameishere
Look, I'm as uncomfortable with the physical world as anybody here, but I
_just can't see_ why you would have something called a "blowout preventer"
that doesn't also have a freaking valve somewhere along the line. Turn valve,
oil stopped. Is it really that hard? There's like 50 different places water
from a city water tank and your sink can be stopped. And again, if you don't
like that "Plan B", ask the BP engineer in line at WalMart with 50,000 boxes
of X-out titleists what his solution is.

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tedunangst
The blowout preventer has a valve. They turned it. The oil didn't stop.

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ugh
So there were presumably multiple failures? I would assume there is some
redundancy in the system (i.e. at least two valves).

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tedunangst
It's harder to find the news articles discussing the early efforts to close
the valves because it's not exactly news anymore, but here's what wikipedia
says.

"The rig's blowout preventer, a fail-safe device fitted at source of the well,
did not automatically cut off the oil flow as intended when the explosion
occurred. BP attempted to use remotely operated underwater vehicles to close
the blowout preventer valves on the well head 5,000 feet (1,500 m) below sea
level, a valve-closing procedure taking 24–36 hours. BP engineers predicted it
would take six attempts to close the valves. As of May 2, 2010, they had sent
six remotely operated underwater vehicles to close the blowout preventer
valves, but all attempts were ultimately unsuccessful."

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mnemonicsloth
Let's hope so.

I don't think the outcome of this procedure is going to be be as clear-cut as
the media have been reporting. "Roll the dice" seemed to be the story as of
last night.

In reality, we'll only know if top kill worked in August when the relief wells
are completed. Until then, we'll only be able to say the fix hasn't failed
yet.

The worry is that if the fix is reported to have worked and problems
materialize a month later, they won't get the same attention as another
blowout tomorrow.

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bho
so far it sounds like at the very least, the oil leak has been slowed down. i
thought it was neat that the 'mud' was really a non-newtonian fluid.

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noodle
question: why didn't they try this first before they tried the "drop a big box
on it" method? seems like a much more sensible solution.

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timmaah
supposedly there is a risk of it making the leak worse.

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noodle
yeah, but the "drop a big box on it" technique has been proven to not work
many times in the past. i did some shoddy research that leads me to believe
that its never worked. seems like they should just cut to the solutions that
have a better success rate.

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Jun8
I was totally amazed at the super advanced, sophisticated machinery until I
saw, on slide 6, that they'll be using a "junk shot", made up of tyres, rope,
and golf balls as a last resort! One more use for all those balls that end up
in course ponds, I guess.

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ck2
I guess the only questions is why did it take weeks to do get this into place
and several days to evaluate once in place?

How exactly could they have made this worse by rushing it a little bit?
Shouldn't there have been round-the-clock engineering shifts being paid for?
Why is anyone going home at night to sleep comfortably?

In our terms this is like _"oh well, server is down across the country, it's
hard to reach so we'll just analyze our options for a few days and try a few
things until something works - nothing to lose sleep over"_.

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nano81
You are underestimating how important logistics and planning are to a large
scale operation like this. This needs large pieces of equipment and a group of
specially trained people assembled and brought to a place which is not easily
accessible, with a carefully thought out plan to maximize their chances. All
that takes time.

BP has all the incentives to stop this as quickly as possible; it is costing
them lots of money and continues to be a PR catastrophe every day it
continues.

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ck2
Do you realize the EXACT same problem happened 30 years ago by the EXACT same
drilling company?

There is nothing "new" here. They should know what to do and only have better
techniques to solve problems, but they are doing no better than 30 years ago.

Nothing worked 30 years ago, they had to wait 9 months while they drilled
relief wells. The tophat failed, the kill failed, everything.

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omd
Maybe it's from working on the Internet too much, reading about innovation,
collaboration, open source, etc, but somehow I get the feeling the oil
industry needs to evolve much like the old media was forced to. I bet if BP
used crowdsourcing instead of asking the "old school engineers" for ideas,
some smart 14-year-old somewhere would have thought of a better plan than to
stuff the hole with golf balls.

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ars
They received something like 70,000 ideas.

And not a chance in the world would that work.

Open source software works because the people who contribute are ....
programmers!

Other kinds of crowd sourcing works by doing something simple/stupid many
times.

Most people don't even understand the problem. So how do you expect them to
come up with a solution? How many people do you know who have the slightest
clue what they do to drill a well? And reading wikipedia doesn't count.

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pmccool
Also, unlike open source, there's no way for people to experiment en masse on
leaking deepwater oil wells. Solutions can't be attempted in parallel.

