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!
I remember that russian specialists had actually offered help with that at the time.
The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
91–100 of 129 posts
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are definitely more than those listed. Vela incident, for instance... I know that this seems deep into tin-foil-hat territory, but do you recall Chelyabinsk? Lots of evidence to point to it being hit by an AMM (probably Gazelle) with a mini-nuke warhead.
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 behaviour - that would be the Gazelle, automatically intercepting a high speed object entering highly protected military airspace. The Gazelle operates by detonating a highly directional, shaped, small, nuclear warhead, in order to utterly destroy a re-entering MIRV - their primary purpose.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
i wonder if the US tests being all in the west and pacific had anything to do with everyone in project Manhattan being in, well, Manhattan
Just FYI, the Manhattan Project did not take place in Manhattan. It was done in Tennessee at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos research facility in New Mexico.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#94Earlier 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.
I don't think there is much "supposedly" about it - Carter was a highly trained nuclear engineer as part of the US Navy nuclear power program under Admiral Rickover. Indeed Carter led a team to help with the NRX reactor accident in Canada.
"The painstaking process required each team member, including Carter, to don protective gear, and be lowered individually into the reactor to disassemble it for minutes at a time. During and after his presidency, Carter indicated that his experience at Chalk River shaped his views on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including his decision not to pursue completion of the neutron bomb."
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#96The 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.
Yep. Life isn't fair.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#97Earlier 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…
I would have thought that the detonation of a nuclear weapon near to the meteor (particularly an ABM which typically use "enhanced radiation" warheads) would have made the remnants fairly "hot" due to neutron activation.
I haven't seen any reports that the remnants of the meteor are radioactive?
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#98Earlier 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.
It's not paranoia. There are legitimate concerns about storing nuclear waste. It's not perfect and it is expensive. Wouldn't it be better to be able to skip past these problems onto something without those drawbacks?
Very substantial amounts of nuclear waste already exist.
Stopping making more doesn't make the problem go away (...at least for many thousand years). I'm more optimistic that current waste will be reprocessed or stored safely if nuclear power generation continues than if it all gets quietly forgotten.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I would have thought that the detonation of a nuclear weapon near to the meteor (particularly an ABM which typically use "enhanced radiation" warheads) would have made the remnants fairly "hot" due to neutron activation. I haven't seen any reports that the remnants of the meteor are radioactive?
Yeah, they were:
1) Refers to fireball hot enough to blind and cause second degree burns, and references two nature papers which say the energy discharged is inconsistent with airburst models http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-m...
2) Residual radiation of fragments wouldn't be expected, as the Gazelle system uses neutron bombs, not uniquely in ABM systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
Fine - it's not definitely the case that this happened, but there's enough information floating about to make it far more than plausible.
Re: The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would have thought that the detonation of a nuclear weapon near to the meteor (particularly an ABM which typically use "enhanced radiation" warheads) would have made the remnants fairly "hot" due to neutron activation. I haven't seen any reports that the remnants of the meteor are radioactive?
Yeah, they were: 1) Refers to fireball hot enough to blind and cause second degree burns, and references two nature papers which say the energy discharged is inconsistent with airburst models http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-m... 2) Residual radiation of fragments wouldn't be expected, as the Gazelle system uses neutron bombs, not uniquely in ABM systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron…
"Residual radiation of fragments wouldn't be expected, as the Gazelle system uses neutron bombs"
"Neutron bomb" is another name for an "enhanced radiation weapon" - basically an H-bomb designed to give off large amounts of neutron radiation. So you would expect anything close to the explosion of such a device (and therefore exposed to a very high neutron flux) to have pretty clear indications that would be easy to test for.