They'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!
> If we had done that with the last BP spill
ITYM Transocean / Halliburton spill...
The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
101–110 of 129 posts
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#102Reminded me of this cool invention..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E16g1_ibpBM
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people on both sides really wanted to use them. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kissinger, being one of them. Fortunately, cooler heads held the launch codes and we all prevailed.
Is this what you are referring to? http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff...
This and a few others. Going through the wired archives you'll find many examples of nuclear false alarms and brinkmanship where the only thing stopping annihilation is an officer ignoring or delaying the order to launch [1][2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people on both sides really wanted to use them. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kissinger, being one of them. Fortunately, cooler heads held the launch codes and we all prevailed.
I think a lot of people on both sides were prepared to use them. Fortunately only a very small number of people wanted to use them and were in any position to actually do so.
Pres. Nixon wanted to use them. And you can't get much more capable than the CIC. Luckily, his advisers talked him out of it.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
"NMR" machines and now called "MRI" machines... (Not entirely sure if that's because people with serious illness are scared of the work "nuclear", or if it's because the President couldn't pronounce it...)
You mean Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, or Dwight Eisenhower? It's especially weird in Carter's case since he was supposedly a trained nuclear engineer.
A lot of exceptionally smart people say (or have said) robutt.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#106Unfortunately 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.
A golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
Compared to a golden age of climate change? In the US, political fear-mongering under Carter killed fuel re-processing; even though it's currently less economical, the ability to lower high-level waste to 1/5th current levels is the sort of thing that can shift the analysis compared to long-term storage. Beyond that, Gen-IV reactor designs can be used to close the nuclear fuel cycle while a number of them can also be used to recycle current waste.
In any case, I'm not sure people realize just how little waste has been produced by volume. Even with the once-through fuel cycle, it's a manageable issue. The biggest problem remains NIMBYism and posturing. It might not be a silver bullet, but it's the damn closest to it.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#107Unfortunately 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.
A golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
We're already in a golden age of nuclear waste. Due to the same irrational fear and NIMBY attitudes that has held back modern nuclear power we don't have a good way of dealing with our current waste. It's piling up all over the place.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
For modern fast reactors it really is. Nuclear waste paranoia is one of the main things that holds back feasible cheap green energy in the modern world.
You cannot simply brush aside this issue. Even if we have 100% safe reactors, generating waste that is deadly in a thousand years is simply not a good idea, no paranoia involved. Besides: nuclear had its chance - they blew it because of greed and sloppiness, the usual thing that happens when large organizations deal with complex issues. I am 100% sure that even with novel reactor designs the same "human factor" would…
Greed and sloppiness? Everyone will grant you that in the case of the Soviet nuclear energy program and the result with Chernobyl, but beyond that, there's nothing to support your argument. If anything, the fact that the only significant accident was the result of human error magnified by institutional decision-making is a remarkably positive argument. Modern reactor designs and procedures are radically different than they were back in the 60s. Ignoring the progress of technology and the safety benefits that it results in is an incredibly narrow-minded position. We learn from history in every other field; what supports your conclusion that nuclear power is somehow different?
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#109Unfortunately 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.
A golden age of nuclear waste? It's not a silver bullet.
If we wanted to, we could build breeder reactors that burn >90% of what we call waste today and leave only isotopes with relatively short half-lives.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
s/seems/is/ Please provide any kind of reputable source as to how the Chelyabinsk meteor was actually a nuke warhead.
What?! Not what I said - the Chelyabinsk meteor was a large ferric bolide, which isn't the kind of meteor which typically airbursts - that's reserved for less dense material. Many of the videos of it breaking up show an object approaching it at huge velocity from the rear the moment before it breaks apart, with many fragments accelerating relative to the previous speed of the bolide - again, not typical break-up beha…
> the Chelyabinsk meteor was a large ferric bolide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteorite
"Type: Ordinary chondrite LL5" (i.e. stony, not iron)