Ecology

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Should the U.S. Nuke the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?

News bluemana Jun 4, 2010

Daniel Foster writes in National Review:

It was September of 1966, and gas was gushing uncontrollably from the wells in the Bukhara province of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. But the Reds, at the height of their industrial might, had a novel solution.

They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshima — to the depths beneath the wellhead. With the pull of a lever, a fistful of plutonium was introduced to itself under enormous pressure, setting off the chain reaction that starts with E = MC2 and ends in Kaboom! The ensuing blast collapsed the drill channel in on itself, sealing off the well.

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Kevin Costner Has a Machine that Turns Oil Into Water (Video)

News ralph May 17, 2010

WaterworldIs BP listening? Reports WGNO ABC26 News:

Kevin Costner is in town hoping star power and his oil spill clean-up machine will help in the gulf.

It promises to help clean up the oil spill. And it’s got some big backing. “Years before I got involved oil spills would come and, I would wonder why we couldn’t clean this up,” says Actor Kevin Costner. He’s invested in a company that invented a processing machine that turns oil into water. “It’s robust. Works at the speed that someone talked about, 200,000 gallons a minute. But it takes 99% of the oil.”

Using a small prototype of the machine, Costner demonstrated how it works for a group of stressed parish officials today. “We’ll take this any day over the black oil that’s covering south Plaquemines right now,” says Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

The larger centrifuge model can collect up to 3,000 gallons of oil a day and right now, 31 are available. The response: There are no better options. “I think it’s a no-brainer to try it,” says Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young. Nungesser says, “I think we need to put it to work.” And St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro says, “Let’s get this out there. See what it can do.”