This reminds me of my visit to Centralia, PA, where the underground fire has been burning since 1962. Took lots of interesting pictures.
The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
61–70 of 129 posts
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a timelapse of every nuclear explosion since 1945. It really puts into perspective just how many nukes have gone off for purposes other than to kill people. It's amazing that only two were used for violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY According to the video, people have detonated 2053 nukes, and America has the dubious distinction of having detonated over 1000.
I appreciate your precise wording. Makes me wonder how many deaths were nonetheless caused by these non-wartime detonations.
Not too many. Almost none directly from the explosions.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#63Unfortunately 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.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#64Unfortunately 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.
Nuclear power was always pretty safe. See eg http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I note that the FDA didn't find a problem with food safety ( 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 suggest that it doesn't help the bacteria work, but doesn't s…
Here's the wikipedia page for anyone curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corexit#Toxicity There are plenty of links to reliable sources there. Which page were you looking at?
I 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.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#66Video 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?
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#67Unfortunately 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.
Honestly, I'd rather deal with nuclear waste than I would what we're currently doing to our environment.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a timelapse of every nuclear explosion since 1945. It really puts into perspective just how many nukes have gone off for purposes other than to kill people. It's amazing that only two were used for violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY According to the video, people have detonated 2053 nukes, and America has the dubious distinction of having detonated over 1000.
Only two were actually used to kill people. Most of the rest were preparations for it.
Arguably most of the nuclear tests were done to prevent war. Each side wanted to show the other they could match and one-up them in nuclear tech. Neither really wanted to ever actually use them to kill people.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 'would be a waste of someone's time to read this comment' That's not a good example to use for jokes because people can justify lighthearted humor as an improvement to their day. Having fun is healthy for you, and whatnot. I think a better way to deal with it is to say that there's a time and place for comedy and HN is not usually that place.
"Having fun is healthy for you" The problem is that some vague reference to a shitty movie isn't fun. There's no witticism in his comment is there? He's effectively saying "this situation can be related to one in a movie". Not exactly hilarious, is it?
Not exactly hilarious. For sure.
But I viewed the parallels as interesting and thought others might be interested as well. In the future I'll be sure to make my comments dead pan serious without any humor.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#70The 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.