Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
Well, for one, there was obviously a failure in the blow-out preventer that led to the explosion in the first place. It never should have happened, so there's certainly going to be a huge investigation into why it did. Considering that all their evidence is under nearly a mile of water however, that could take a while.
the tourist industry that is vital to the Gulf Coast.
Those fucking douchebags who spend Spring Break in Panama City?
It's a lot bigger than those human turds. Many people come down to the Gulf Coast to just chill on the beach with their family, eat some good local seafood and enjoy the local atmosphere. Spring Break is just the kick-off for what most of us living down here earn our livelihoods from. It's a huge chunk of our local economy. Probably the largest.
Yes, this is truth. My family and I had a vacation planned for the Gulf Coast over in the St. Pete Beach area in June. Now, I can fully expect this slick to have made its way to the Tampa area by the time I'd be getting there. This is AWESOME.
This has been a family tradition for as long as I've been alive. I'm quite enraged by this.
Xenogear_0001 on
0
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Well, for one, there was obviously a failure in the blow-out preventer that led to the explosion in the first place. It never should have happened, so there's certainly going to be a huge investigation into why it did. Considering that all their evidence is under nearly a mile of water however, that could take a while.
Not only that, but the instruments that would normally record the event are now at the bottom of the Gulf, most likely unrecoverable. I would be surprised to learn if they had up to the moment back ups on shore, because these rigs are built to survive all kinds of catastrophes, both natural and man made.
I was able to (encouraged to) read an in depth report on what had gone wrong, not written for politicians or the public, but for refinery operators. The entire thing was more or less caused by a string of operators seeing things slightly out of the ordinary but deciding that things were OK because they see those conditions with some regularity. There was really only one or two objectively wrong decisions made that led to a huge gas spill ... and once a giant cloud of flammable gas is loose in a place like a refinery, something will set it off. You're not allowed cell phones or other electronic devices for the reason that they could potentially be an ignition source, but with all the other equipment running around in a place like that the explosion was inevitable.
Aren't there leak detectors running constantly and in multiple locations in any refinery? The kind of thing that, long before an explosion, should show an obvious and dangerous rise in combustable hydrocarbons?
the tourist industry that is vital to the Gulf Coast.
Those fucking douchebags who spend Spring Break in Panama City?
It's a lot bigger than those human turds. Many people come down to the Gulf Coast to just chill on the beach with their family, eat some good local seafood and enjoy the local atmosphere. Spring Break is just the kick-off for what most of us living down here earn our livelihoods from. It's a huge chunk of our local economy. Probably the largest.
Yes, this is truth. My family and I had a vacation planned for the Gulf Coast over in the St. Pete Beach area in June. Now, I can fully expect this slick to have made its way to the Tampa area by the time I'd be getting there. This is AWESOME.
This has been a family tradition for as long as I've been alive. I'm quite enraged by this.
If it makes you feel better about your trip, this was taken yesterday, and I highly doubt it will grossly affect your trip, if you still go.
Octoparrot on
0
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
the tourist industry that is vital to the Gulf Coast.
Those fucking douchebags who spend Spring Break in Panama City?
It's a lot bigger than those human turds. Many people come down to the Gulf Coast to just chill on the beach with their family, eat some good local seafood and enjoy the local atmosphere. Spring Break is just the kick-off for what most of us living down here earn our livelihoods from. It's a huge chunk of our local economy. Probably the largest.
Yes, this is truth. My family and I had a vacation planned for the Gulf Coast over in the St. Pete Beach area in June. Now, I can fully expect this slick to have made its way to the Tampa area by the time I'd be getting there. This is AWESOME.
This has been a family tradition for as long as I've been alive. I'm quite enraged by this.
If the source of your rage is that your family vacation is canceled, then please forgive me when I say "Drink bleach, silly goose."
TL DR on
0
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
C'mon guys. Xeno and his family have a personal connection to this area. Of course he's not just bummed about his trip.
So I asked my dad about this (he works for BP in the north sea. Only works for them, he isn't a BP employee! No mailbombs please!)
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
Unfortunately as it slowly crawls it's way back up to $4, no one here is gonna care about coastlines as long as they're in far-away places like Louisiana (which is still recovering from a Hurricane anyway) and no one attractive or with an interesting back-story died in the explosion.
I was able to (encouraged to) read an in depth report on what had gone wrong, not written for politicians or the public, but for refinery operators. The entire thing was more or less caused by a string of operators seeing things slightly out of the ordinary but deciding that things were OK because they see those conditions with some regularity. There was really only one or two objectively wrong decisions made that led to a huge gas spill ... and once a giant cloud of flammable gas is loose in a place like a refinery, something will set it off. You're not allowed cell phones or other electronic devices for the reason that they could potentially be an ignition source, but with all the other equipment running around in a place like that the explosion was inevitable.
Aren't there leak detectors running constantly and in multiple locations in any refinery? The kind of thing that, long before an explosion, should show an obvious and dangerous rise in combustable hydrocarbons?
There are H2S detectors everywhere because it's a common leak and very dangerous to people (at Shell we had to wear one on our person whenever we went outside). As far as hydrocarbon leak detectors, I'm not aware of any. Typically you'd see a leak or spill from the instrumentation as the flow rates wouldn't match with the vessel pressures, but if my memory serves (it's been a while) the BP leak happened from an overflow tank that was supposed to have an active flare but didn't - so the gas was supposed to be escaping, just not before being burned.
An oil rig blowing up and sinking unfortunately happens. That's the petrochemical industry for you. There's a reason a Roughneck (lowest drilling rank) starts at $60K.
What's surprising is, is that the safety didn't work. Does your dad have any insight on that for us?
Are the safety measures automatic, or are they in place as warning signs that require the crew's immediate attention?
Considering the depth, I would assume they're automatic. You can't just get a guy down 5k feet to close or open a valve in an emergency.
As far as the decision to close / open a valve, I don't know. I know much more of this process is manual than I would have guessed before I worked in the industry for a while, so I really can't say.
the tourist industry that is vital to the Gulf Coast.
Those fucking douchebags who spend Spring Break in Panama City?
It's a lot bigger than those human turds. Many people come down to the Gulf Coast to just chill on the beach with their family, eat some good local seafood and enjoy the local atmosphere. Spring Break is just the kick-off for what most of us living down here earn our livelihoods from. It's a huge chunk of our local economy. Probably the largest.
Yes, this is truth. My family and I had a vacation planned for the Gulf Coast over in the St. Pete Beach area in June. Now, I can fully expect this slick to have made its way to the Tampa area by the time I'd be getting there. This is AWESOME.
This has been a family tradition for as long as I've been alive. I'm quite enraged by this.
If it makes you feel better about your trip, this was taken yesterday, and I highly doubt it will grossly affect your trip, if you still go.
Unfortunately it's only heading towards Louisiana because of the cold front blasting up from the South. Once the winds change I'll bet that every beach in the gulf is going to be seeing the effects. Xenogear, honestly if it does come this way you and your family can be awesome and help us clean a little while on vacation. Ft. Desoto and a few other places are already stocking up on Dawn and cleaning gear for the animals.
Then after that I'd recommend trying Daytona for the beaches.
Jademonkey79 on
"We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them."
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Are the safety measures automatic, or are they in place as warning signs that require the crew's immediate attention?
Considering the depth, I would assume they're automatic. You can't just get a guy down 5k feet to close or open a valve in an emergency.
Well, surely there's controls top-side that have effect on things deep below to some level.
I'm guess there were such controls but they got blowed up.
That would be unfortunate.
So how'd that plan to set the whole thing ablaze work out?
They never intended to set the whole thing on fire. It's just not a good idea. They can tow small amounts out about fifty miles off the coast and light it on fire with what basically amounts to napalm. Weather and other conditions permitting. If that goes great, then they can handle about 3% of the spill using that technique.
Here's a diagram from the Wallstreet Journal. Note that this rig did not have the tertiary backup.
Based on that diagram and my complete lack of expertise, that doesn't look passively safe to me. Just redundantly actively safe.
I can't think of how you would design a passively safe valve for this. The shear size of the valve would mean that it would take quite a bit force to move the valve. The dimensions and forces involved make using a spring system or the like unreasonable.
fshavlak on
0
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I can't think of how you would design a passively safe valve for this. The shear size of the valve would mean that it would take quite a bit force to move the valve. The dimensions and forces involved make using a spring system or the like unreasonable.
I know nothing of engineering, so I'm talking out of my ass here. I would envision a sphincter valve, whose default state is shut. Then you need a robotic force that keeps it open. Set it up so that the robot only operates while getting a valid, rotating code phrase from the rig. When that stops, the robot lets go, and the valve puckers.
I can't think of how you would design a passively safe valve for this. The shear size of the valve would mean that it would take quite a bit force to move the valve. The dimensions and forces involved make using a spring system or the like unreasonable.
I know nothing of engineering, so I'm talking out of my ass here. I would envision a sphincter valve, whose default state is shut. Then you need a robotic force that keeps it open. Set it up so that the robot only operates while getting a valid, rotating code phrase from the rig. When that stops, the robot lets go, and the valve puckers.
They use valves like this for connecting various tools in the toolchain to each other - this minimizes the spilled drilling mud as you assemble or disassemble a toolchain.
None of the materials or techniques scale well. Also, a valve of this design wouldn't be able to contain a blowout. To be able to withstand that kind of force, you'd need something really beefy and I'm not aware of any such valves that are passive. I think that they way they do it (multiple active safeties) is probably about as good as you can do. Sounds like a remotely triggered safety on this rig would have saved everyone a lot of headaches.
So I asked my dad about this (he works for BP in the north sea. Only works for them, he isn't a BP employee! No mailbombs please!)
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
So there you have it.
I am going to go full out "hippy" here for a moment- the fact that this happens at all is enough of a reason for me to flat out abandon offshore drilling.
Yes I know there is always a risk involved here, but frankly? I don't care if it happens one time in a hundred years; that is still too often for me.
My point is a rig "blowing up and sinking" causes enough problems and damage that if it happens even one time it has, in my opinion, happened too many times.
Yes this is a very goosey opinion. I am fully aware of that. I am ALSO fully aware that no amount of accidents will ever STOP off shore drilling, so I don't feel too silly for carrying it.
So I asked my dad about this (he works for BP in the north sea. Only works for them, he isn't a BP employee! No mailbombs please!)
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
So there you have it.
I am going to go full out "hippy" here for a moment- the fact that this happens at all is enough of a reason for me to flat out abandon offshore drilling.
Yes I know there is always a risk involved here, but frankly? I don't care if it happens one time in a hundred years; that is still too often for me.
My point is a rig "blowing up and sinking" causes enough problems and damage that if it happens even one time it has, in my opinion, happened too many times.
Yes this is a very goosey opinion. I am fully aware of that. I am ALSO fully aware that no amount of accidents will ever STOP off shore drilling, so I don't feel too silly for carrying it.
The vast majority of rig disasters happen while they are in tow to or from a site - you loose the rig but aside from the addition of a rig to the seafloor, there is no environmental impact.
The vast majority of the rest of rig sinkings are due to bad weather / big storms. When a hurricane is on the way, the rig is usually shut down and the operators evacuated. If the rig is lost, some small amount of oil is lost, but the well isn't left open.
The last disaster that I can find reference to involving a rig sinking causing a major oil spill was off california in the 1960s. The rig suffered a blowback, but managed to plug the hole. Unfortunately, the increased pressure in the well caused the oil to find new ways to the surface through the numerous faults in the area.
As far as one disaster being one too many and we shouldn't be doing it at all. If we applied this to land based drilling as well, this thought process would leave us basically not industrialized. Of course, you could make argument for that maybe being a good thing, but the simple truth is that drilling for oil, on and off shore, is necessary to support a modern society. You don't get to have things like cars, computers, modern healthcare, space programs, etc. without what society thinks of as the dark side of industrialization - drilling for oil, pollutants in the atmosphere, etc.
I'm all for finding better ways to provide the necessary energy to our society, but at the moment oil / gas is the best we can do.
I can't think of how you would design a passively safe valve for this. The shear size of the valve would mean that it would take quite a bit force to move the valve. The dimensions and forces involved make using a spring system or the like unreasonable.
I know nothing of engineering, so I'm talking out of my ass here. I would envision a sphincter valve, whose default state is shut. Then you need a robotic force that keeps it open. Set it up so that the robot only operates while getting a valid, rotating code phrase from the rig. When that stops, the robot lets go, and the valve puckers.
Right now there are 2 hydraulic rams that are pushed together to close the valve off. In order for what you are describing to work you'd need to have a constant mechanical force working to close those, while having an opposed force to keep them open when you want them. The problem comes from being able to generate that constant mechanical force in some way that is more reliable and durable than the hydraulics currently being used. If something fucked the pistons designed to close the valve on this, then anything that provided a mechanical force would probably fair just as bad if not worse.
So I asked my dad about this (he works for BP in the north sea. Only works for them, he isn't a BP employee! No mailbombs please!)
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
So there you have it.
I am going to go full out "hippy" here for a moment- the fact that this happens at all is enough of a reason for me to flat out abandon offshore drilling.
Yes I know there is always a risk involved here, but frankly? I don't care if it happens one time in a hundred years; that is still too often for me.
My point is a rig "blowing up and sinking" causes enough problems and damage that if it happens even one time it has, in my opinion, happened too many times.
Yes this is a very goosey opinion. I am fully aware of that. I am ALSO fully aware that no amount of accidents will ever STOP off shore drilling, so I don't feel too silly for carrying it.
The vast majority of rig disasters happen while they are in tow to or from a site - you loose the rig but aside from the addition of a rig to the seafloor, there is no environmental impact.
The vast majority of the rest of rig sinkings are due to bad weather / big storms. When a hurricane is on the way, the rig is usually shut down and the operators evacuated. If the rig is lost, some small amount of oil is lost, but the well isn't left open.
The last disaster that I can find reference to involving a rig sinking causing a major oil spill was off california in the 1960s. The rig suffered a blowback, but managed to plug the hole. Unfortunately, the increased pressure in the well caused the oil to find new ways to the surface through the numerous faults in the area.
As far as one disaster being one too many and we shouldn't be doing it at all. If we applied this to land based drilling as well, this thought process would leave us basically not industrialized. Of course, you could make argument for that maybe being a good thing, but the simple truth is that drilling for oil, on and off shore, is necessary to support a modern society. You don't get to have things like cars, computers, modern healthcare, space programs, etc. without what society thinks of as the dark side of industrialization - drilling for oil, pollutants in the atmosphere, etc.
I'm all for finding better ways to provide the necessary energy to our society, but at the moment oil / gas is the best we can do.
I don't know if you saw my other posts in this thread- especially my discourse with Galahad. I understand this all as well.
Here is a question I (honestly) don't know the answer to- What are the consequences of a land-based drill rig "exploding and sinking" (or the terrestrial equivalent?).
Are they worse, the same, or less bad than the impacts of an offshore rig disaster such as this one?
So I asked my dad about this (he works for BP in the north sea. Only works for them, he isn't a BP employee! No mailbombs please!)
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
So there you have it.
I am going to go full out "hippy" here for a moment- the fact that this happens at all is enough of a reason for me to flat out abandon offshore drilling.
Yes I know there is always a risk involved here, but frankly? I don't care if it happens one time in a hundred years; that is still too often for me.
My point is a rig "blowing up and sinking" causes enough problems and damage that if it happens even one time it has, in my opinion, happened too many times.
Yes this is a very goosey opinion. I am fully aware of that. I am ALSO fully aware that no amount of accidents will ever STOP off shore drilling, so I don't feel too silly for carrying it.
The biggest problem with halting offshore drilling is that you're putting thousands upon thousands of people out of jobs, from those who are actually on the platforms to the refineries that are all around the area I live.
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Damage control is much easier for this sort of thing on land. The fact that this leak is nearly a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf makes everything far more complicated.
Just saw this picture in an article. It doesn't have the same emotional impact as high altitude/satellite photography, but it's a lot more informative.
Posts
Yeah, I'm normally the same way, Hen. I get ya.
It's just that this is my back yard this time. I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to smell the oil at my gig on the beach tonight.
So forgive me if I get a little twitchy in here.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Yes, this is truth. My family and I had a vacation planned for the Gulf Coast over in the St. Pete Beach area in June. Now, I can fully expect this slick to have made its way to the Tampa area by the time I'd be getting there. This is AWESOME.
This has been a family tradition for as long as I've been alive. I'm quite enraged by this.
Not only that, but the instruments that would normally record the event are now at the bottom of the Gulf, most likely unrecoverable. I would be surprised to learn if they had up to the moment back ups on shore, because these rigs are built to survive all kinds of catastrophes, both natural and man made.
Aren't there leak detectors running constantly and in multiple locations in any refinery? The kind of thing that, long before an explosion, should show an obvious and dangerous rise in combustable hydrocarbons?
If it makes you feel better about your trip, this was taken yesterday, and I highly doubt it will grossly affect your trip, if you still go.
If the source of your rage is that your family vacation is canceled, then please forgive me when I say "Drink bleach, silly goose."
and he said something tangential that was pretty interesting:
There's a discussion up here about drilling off the coast of northern norway or not. The people who worked out the risk of a blowout happening recently revised their numbers; they analyzed statistics of those things that make blowouts happen happening, but they found that nearly all of the incidents in their data came from the gulf of mexico. If they used data from the north sea, the risk was much lower.
So, hm.
Also, on "isn't it strange for a rig to just blow up and sink?" "No, they do that sometimes."
So there you have it.
Unfortunately as it slowly crawls it's way back up to $4, no one here is gonna care about coastlines as long as they're in far-away places like Louisiana (which is still recovering from a Hurricane anyway) and no one attractive or with an interesting back-story died in the explosion.
jaded
i am it
There are H2S detectors everywhere because it's a common leak and very dangerous to people (at Shell we had to wear one on our person whenever we went outside). As far as hydrocarbon leak detectors, I'm not aware of any. Typically you'd see a leak or spill from the instrumentation as the flow rates wouldn't match with the vessel pressures, but if my memory serves (it's been a while) the BP leak happened from an overflow tank that was supposed to have an active flare but didn't - so the gas was supposed to be escaping, just not before being burned.
What's surprising is, is that the safety didn't work. Does your dad have any insight on that for us?
Considering the depth, I would assume they're automatic. You can't just get a guy down 5k feet to close or open a valve in an emergency.
As far as the decision to close / open a valve, I don't know. I know much more of this process is manual than I would have guessed before I worked in the industry for a while, so I really can't say.
Unfortunately it's only heading towards Louisiana because of the cold front blasting up from the South. Once the winds change I'll bet that every beach in the gulf is going to be seeing the effects. Xenogear, honestly if it does come this way you and your family can be awesome and help us clean a little while on vacation. Ft. Desoto and a few other places are already stocking up on Dawn and cleaning gear for the animals.
Then after that I'd recommend trying Daytona for the beaches.
Well, surely there's controls top-side that have effect on things deep below to some level.
I'm guess there were such controls but they got blowed up.
That would be unfortunate.
So how'd that plan to set the whole thing ablaze work out?
They never intended to set the whole thing on fire. It's just not a good idea. They can tow small amounts out about fifty miles off the coast and light it on fire with what basically amounts to napalm. Weather and other conditions permitting. If that goes great, then they can handle about 3% of the spill using that technique.
Based on that diagram and my complete lack of expertise, that doesn't look passively safe to me. Just redundantly actively safe.
I know that's just asking for too much, though.
I can't think of how you would design a passively safe valve for this. The shear size of the valve would mean that it would take quite a bit force to move the valve. The dimensions and forces involved make using a spring system or the like unreasonable.
The full talk is available on TED.com
I know nothing of engineering, so I'm talking out of my ass here. I would envision a sphincter valve, whose default state is shut. Then you need a robotic force that keeps it open. Set it up so that the robot only operates while getting a valid, rotating code phrase from the rig. When that stops, the robot lets go, and the valve puckers.
They use valves like this for connecting various tools in the toolchain to each other - this minimizes the spilled drilling mud as you assemble or disassemble a toolchain.
None of the materials or techniques scale well. Also, a valve of this design wouldn't be able to contain a blowout. To be able to withstand that kind of force, you'd need something really beefy and I'm not aware of any such valves that are passive. I think that they way they do it (multiple active safeties) is probably about as good as you can do. Sounds like a remotely triggered safety on this rig would have saved everyone a lot of headaches.
I am going to go full out "hippy" here for a moment- the fact that this happens at all is enough of a reason for me to flat out abandon offshore drilling.
Yes I know there is always a risk involved here, but frankly? I don't care if it happens one time in a hundred years; that is still too often for me.
My point is a rig "blowing up and sinking" causes enough problems and damage that if it happens even one time it has, in my opinion, happened too many times.
Yes this is a very goosey opinion. I am fully aware of that. I am ALSO fully aware that no amount of accidents will ever STOP off shore drilling, so I don't feel too silly for carrying it.
The vast majority of rig disasters happen while they are in tow to or from a site - you loose the rig but aside from the addition of a rig to the seafloor, there is no environmental impact.
The vast majority of the rest of rig sinkings are due to bad weather / big storms. When a hurricane is on the way, the rig is usually shut down and the operators evacuated. If the rig is lost, some small amount of oil is lost, but the well isn't left open.
The last disaster that I can find reference to involving a rig sinking causing a major oil spill was off california in the 1960s. The rig suffered a blowback, but managed to plug the hole. Unfortunately, the increased pressure in the well caused the oil to find new ways to the surface through the numerous faults in the area.
As far as one disaster being one too many and we shouldn't be doing it at all. If we applied this to land based drilling as well, this thought process would leave us basically not industrialized. Of course, you could make argument for that maybe being a good thing, but the simple truth is that drilling for oil, on and off shore, is necessary to support a modern society. You don't get to have things like cars, computers, modern healthcare, space programs, etc. without what society thinks of as the dark side of industrialization - drilling for oil, pollutants in the atmosphere, etc.
I'm all for finding better ways to provide the necessary energy to our society, but at the moment oil / gas is the best we can do.
Right now there are 2 hydraulic rams that are pushed together to close the valve off. In order for what you are describing to work you'd need to have a constant mechanical force working to close those, while having an opposed force to keep them open when you want them. The problem comes from being able to generate that constant mechanical force in some way that is more reliable and durable than the hydraulics currently being used. If something fucked the pistons designed to close the valve on this, then anything that provided a mechanical force would probably fair just as bad if not worse.
I don't know if you saw my other posts in this thread- especially my discourse with Galahad. I understand this all as well.
Here is a question I (honestly) don't know the answer to- What are the consequences of a land-based drill rig "exploding and sinking" (or the terrestrial equivalent?).
Are they worse, the same, or less bad than the impacts of an offshore rig disaster such as this one?
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Unless Saddam just visited or something.
In NOLA? That's just the piss on the sidewalk.
The biggest problem with halting offshore drilling is that you're putting thousands upon thousands of people out of jobs, from those who are actually on the platforms to the refineries that are all around the area I live.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Just saw this picture in an article. It doesn't have the same emotional impact as high altitude/satellite photography, but it's a lot more informative.
A bit yes. My main problem with nuclear power is the storage of waste but that is a different discussion
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/apr/27/cause-bay-areas-oily-odor-still-air/
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126