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Similaire à Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Similaire à Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (20)
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- Click “Oil Spill” for a video containing information, quotes, images, footage and headlines.
- At these rates, it could take up to 782 years to drain all the oil.
- Chemical Dispersants are being sprayed onto oil slicks to accelerate the process of natural dispersion . Oil spill dispersants do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment. Rather, they change the inherent chemical and physical properties of oil, thereby changing the oil’s transport, fate and potential effects. The objective of dispersant use is to enhance the amount of oil that physically mixes into the water column, reducing the potential that a surface slick will contaminate shoreline habitats or come into contact with birds, marine mammals, or other organisms that exist on the water surface or shoreline. On April 28, BP performed the first controlled burn of surface oil. Controlled burns continued to be used at the Deepwater Horizon spill site through mid-May, when conditions were right. This represents the first on-water in-situ burning at a spill since the 1989 test burn during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which was the first time a fire-resistant boom was used at a spill. By June 22, more than 225 controlled burns have been conducted that removed more than 9.3 million gallons of oil from the open water. The construction of about 80 miles of sand berms along barrier islands and wetlands was to capture oil from the spill. The idea is that the oil would collect behind these walls of sand so cleanup crews could suck it up before it reaches the marshes. The plan required a permit from the U.S. Corps of Engineers and from the U.S. Coast Guard which oversees the government response. But federal officials and some scientists expressed concern about the plan. Some experts question whether dredging companies could build up the barrier islands quickly enough to save the marshes. There is also concern that the kind of sand berms envisioned in the plan might wash away quickly after a couple of storms, wasting scarce sand in the region. Some scientists are concerned that the berms could block inlets that carry water to the wetlands on shore and interfere with the movement of organisms that depend on tidal flushing.
- The seafloor is comprised of igneous rock, mainly basalt. This rock melts at around a temperature of 1450°C.
- In mid-April, United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu assembled a team of nuclear physicists, including hydrogen bomb designer Richard Garwin and Sandia National Laboratories director Tom Hunter. On 24 May BP ruled out conventional explosives, saying that if blasts failed to clog the well, "We would have denied ourselves all other options.” Federal officials also ruled out nuclear devices due to environmental and political risks, and because it would violate the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Allen stated, "since we don't know the condition of that well bore or the casings, I would be cautious about putting any kind of kinetic energy on that well head, because what you may do is create open communication between the reservoir and the sea floor." Allen also said that the result could be oil seeping through cracks and through the seafloor, "and then be uncontrolled until the reservoir pressure equalized with the hydrostatic pressure; I think that's a risk that's too great to take a chance on, myself." Casing integrity concerns also influenced the pressure chosen for the top kill procedure.
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