MEANWHILE, JUST THE THOUGHT OF USING THEM TO SEAL THE LEAK...:

'Drilling' for oil with ... nuclear weapons? The US has done it. (Peter Grier, June 10, 2010, CS Monitor)

[H]ere’s something you might not know: The US once used nukes for the exact opposite purpose. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) exploded nuclear devices underground in Colorado and New Mexico, not to stop flows of petroleum, but to start them.

It’s true. Decades ago, the AEC (ancestor of today’s Department of Energy) was very big on the Plowshare Program, which studied ways of using nuclear blasts for peaceful purposes. Project Chariot, for instance, looked at using five hydrogen bombs to create a nice new 700-foot-deep artificial harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska. Project Ditchdigger investigated the physics of using nukes to produce canals.

But it turned out that the most promising peaceful use of nuclear explosions was for the stimulation of natural-gas production.

...seems to have sent the UR into some kind of catatonic state.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2010 1:47 PM