Paul Svejda

BP Oil Spill Clean Up Ideas And Solutions

While the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been an environmental disaster on a level that has never seen before, it has also been the inspiration for a worldwide outpouring of ingenuity. There are reports that more than 8,000 BP oil spill clean up ideas and solutions have been offered and are being considered.

While many of the BP clean up solutions that have actually been tried have been the standard practice for an oil spill clean up, clean up ideas have also been proposed to BP that are far more creative and extreme.

Of all of the BP oil spill clean up ideas and solutions that have been proposed so far, the riskiest has probably been the suggestion that a nuclear weapon could be used to kill the well. According to some reports, the Russians have used this tactic in the past when they experienced similar situations with oil wells that were out of control. The theory is that the immense heat generated by a nuclear detonation is capable of almost instantly converting the sand of the seabed into a liquid glass that can then flow together into a solid surface through which the oil cannot pass. However, the wells on which the Russians experimented with this solution were on land and were not oil wells, which means that it's unclear how well their experiences would translate to this situation. Though some experts are beginning to suggest that this would be a worthwhile approach to at least consider, it is politically out of the question for the time being. The current U.S. President has been heavily invested in efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles worldwide and it would be a disaster to his work to have to explain why his country unilaterally chose to detonate a warhead in the seabed.

There are other BP oil spill clean up ideas and solutions that some people find startling, though they are far more politically acceptable. While Kevin Costner is known to most people only as an actor and director, he is now becoming one of the more prominent names when it comes to people who have developed BP clean up solutions that the company is considering pursuing. He is a major investor in a project that developed what is basically a large centrifuge that operates in the water. It is reportedly highly effective at separating the oil from the water, and he is in talks with BP about deploying it in the Gulf of Mexico to aid the clean up effort.

The range of BP oil spill clean up ideas and solutions that are being produced around the world represents one of the most concentrated efforts ever at harnessing human creativity to solve a technical problem. Even if BP doesn't find complete success at controlling the oil before they can finish drilling a relief well, the outpouring of interest in solutions to this problem will have long-term effects on the field. A tremendous amount of material has been produced on ways that oil can potentially be controlled and cleaned up once it's in the water, and future disaster sites will benefit from the ideas that the world has come together to produce in response to this spill.

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