BP Gusher and treatment thereof

Holy cow, I cannot believe that people are seriously suggesting that we blow up the gusher with a nuke, simply because the Soviets did it. Besides the obvious (the seabed is not rock, etc., etc.), there's one really REALLY big problem with the referenced material: the Soviets were fighting a FIRE with explosives. Not a leaking oil well under extreme deep conditions, but a natural gas well FIRE. A fire is not a leak; it is a chemical chain reaction that requires oxygen and a fuel substrate, plus heat -- this is the "fire tetrahedron". Fighting a fire is a matter of removing the fuel and/or the oxygen from the environment, or by cooling everything. Once the chemical chain reaction is stopped, or the fuel or oxygen are removed, or the substrates are cooled below their fire point, the fire is out.

A natural gas well fire can be stopped with the same approach -- by shutting off the fuel line (capping and then injecting inert substrates, or drilling a relief well and filling in with drilling mud); by applying volumes of water or a fire-suppressant chemical, or by using an explosives (see Kuwait, Gulf War One, 900 gas wells lit on fire by Iraq...). Explosives can shut off a fire rapidly, allowing the personnel to swiftly place a cap on the well. The explosives remove the oxygen and interrupt the flow of the fuel substrate, creating a temporary gap that is fire-less; in this space the well cap is swung in and over the well.

The BP gusher is, first of all, NOT A FIRE. I cannot emphasize this enough. It is a liquid under pressure that is escaping at high flow rates, therefore has a lot of pressure against any sealing process. It is not a fire that can be interrupted. Sealing or crimping the pipes will only constrict the line, creating a higher pressure line that will likely generate either a faster flow rate out, or leaks around the area, or some combination of the two. Using ultra-high explosives will only increase the likelihood of leakage into the seabed around the pipes, creating something that is too large to contain or cap, much less seal. Adding more explosive power only increases the chance that Something Bad will happen, and at a depth too difficult or dangerous to work rapidly in. There are people who seem to think that a nuclear device will "glassify" the seabed, and that this will shut off the well.

First of all, glassification requires rock. Nuclear explosive melt glass is made of melted rocks, not of seabed silt. Secondly, NEMG is not homogenous; it is full of holes and bubbles and fracture lines. This is not a stable medium that can withstand great pressures. After all, how many dangerous pressurized materials are transported or stored in glass containers? That would be zero. If you're anywhere near a LNG storage facility or any kind of gas/oil/hydrocarbon production facility, you will notice the many metallic storage containers. Metal containers can be built to withstand great pressures, and yet even those tanks are all fitted with escape valves in case of fire, to prevent uncontrolled rupture of the tanks. No glass is used, and yet these people seem to think that nuclear glassification will solve the BP gusher.

Thirdly, this is a liquid under pressure, escaping at a high flow rate. It will push out of any glass structure that might possibly be randomly created by a nuclear device -- and I'd like to know how these people think the glassification will automatically envelop just the right areas, and in what shape (spherical? ovoid? square?), because I'd like to borrow their spectacles of knowledge for my own use.

And finally, this isn't at all similar to the Soviet gas well FIRE suppression tactics, because -- once again -- this is NOT A FIRE. Blowing up the oil gusher will only result in waking Godzilla, and we certainly do not want that to happen. Just ask Tokyo.