Nuclear Explosion to Solve Gulf Oil Leak?

Jun 3, 2010

By Oliver Bloom

The severity of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has prompted some nuclear scientists and engineers to suggest using nuclear weapons to seal the well. The Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear weapons to seal leaking gas wells as part of the Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (Program #7), a series of 115 nuclear explosions for various engineering and mining tasks. The U.S. government has so far rejected the possibility.

The theory behind it is relatively simple. As the New York Times explained,

The nuclear option seems attractive because the extreme heat might create a tough seal. An exploding atom bomb generates temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and, detonated underground, can turn acres of porous rock into a glassy plug, much like a huge stopper in a leaky bottle.

Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert and investment banker, speaking on Bloomberg News argued that

Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it and hopefully encase in the oil

And Daniel Foster, news editor of the National Review online, wrote

Before the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the United States successfully detonated nuclear devices both on land and under water, and two potential delivery paths for a nuke are already in place in the form of the partially completed relief wells. Assuming the bomb could be delivered close enough to the drill channel, the yield required would be relatively small. Moreover, well-established formulae establish the burial-depth-to-yield ratios that make it possible to trap virtually all of the radioactive fallout within the sub-oceanic bedrock.

But while the theory sounds simple, the Times was also quick to point out both the ecological and geopolitical consequences of a detonation,

Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically — it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.

Even those in favor of using a nuclear weapon to seal the leaking well, including Christopher Brownfield, a former nuclear submarine officer and visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia, are quick to admit the profound policy repercussions from such a detonation:

But using nuclear weapons, even for peaceful purposes, would be problematic for a president who stood in Prague and declared that the world should rid itself of such devices. If President Obama were to use a nuke to close this well, he would give other states an excuse to seek nuclear weapons of their own. After all, it was an argument for “peaceful nuclear explosions” that allowed India to justify its acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1970s. We don’t need Iran making the same argument tomorrow.

It seems highly unlikely then, that President Obama will suddenly reverse course on his nuclear agenda and consider the use of a nuclear weapon to plug the leaking oil well. The tremendous ecological consequences are unknown, the technical risks of an explosion at such depth are not well understood and there is a chance that an explosion would just make the flow worse. And that is even before one confronts the geopolitical consequences of a detonation. That being said, if BP continues to be unable to stem the flow and if the ecological damage continues to mount, President Obama may be forced to consider other options. A nuclear explosion would not be one of them, but the President may consider conventional explosives, along the lines of what Christopher Brownfield suggested

Our military could potentially use a carefully placed combination of conventional explosives to collapse the well. Our technology is much better than that of the Soviet Union in 1966, so we should be able to make this work without having to go nuclear. I’m confident that the U.S. Navy, the Army Corps of Engineers, and some private-sector organizations could come together and make this happen.

The discussion of using nuclear weapons for engineering purposes, an idea that died at the end of the Cold War, reflects the gravity of the situation in which President Obama and BP find themselves. The mere thought of sacrificing all of President Obama’s work combating nuclear proliferation is testimony enough.