July 3, 2010 2:23 PM PDT

Should BP nuke its leaking oil well?

by Reuters

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON--His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades
of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former longtime Russian minister of
nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to
fix BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says, nonchalantly puffing a cigarette
as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where
he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their
time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is
solved."

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional
newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea,
and BP executives say they are not considering an explosion--nuclear or
otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day
gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to
die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world.
Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close
a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks.
Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater
explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more
than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in
cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he
says.

And it's not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind
U.S. research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and '70s says a nuclear
explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew
Simmons, a former energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and the
founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is
another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an
explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials
rather than nukes. "Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and
cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may
become necessary...unless we are going to do that, we are dependent on the
technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton told the Fortune/Time/CNN
Global Forum in South Africa on June 29.

http://tinyurl.com/NUKE-DUKEM

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