Why couldn't they make a 3 inch thick iron plate about 1 meter squared. Then

[applegrove]

cut a whole into the bedrock right up to the oil well hole and slip the metal plate across. The metal plate would then be kept in place by the weight of the bedrock above. Better yet the bedrock would collapse on itself making it even more secure.

[Skink]

1. Works for me.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. the bedrock would have to be very thick

[tridim]

3. Your assets are gravity, rope and a few fragile robots. Good luck.

[northzax]

4. no seal

and there are likely other weak spots on the pipe that will fail.

[Skink]

5. This calls for some type of Laser.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. Powerful laser + turbid water = steam = nada.... n/t

[mikelgb]

8. Sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7bYNAHXxw

[applegrove]

9. LOL!

[stray cat]

7. picture a frozen coke bottle exploding x 1000

[Codeine]

10. Three points.

One, I'm not picturing exactly what you mean here - more details?

Two, how on Earth would you even cut something like that?

Three, how is that supposed to be faster than the relief well being drilled?

[wtmusic]

11. What about a concrete hockey puck the size of a house

hauled into place by barges, and plopped right on top of that sucker?

Oh yeah, BP wouldn't have a well anymore...gotta get my priorities straight. :silly:

[Skink]

12. stack a bunch of curling things together.

[Webster Green]

13. There is 3 foot diameter steel pipe lining the hole.

Where it comes up out of the seabed there is a 60 foot tall blowout preventer (BOP) mounted on top of the pipe.

The pressure at the top of the well pipe where it enters the BOP is greater than 10,000 psi.

Cut a hole into the bedrock? Where? With what? If you were able to somehow dig a tunnel down through the rock and over to the well pipe, you would still have to cut all the way across a 3' diameter pipe (double pipe, since there's also a casing.) As soon as you cut into the pipe you would unleash a gusher of oil and gas which would blow all your fix-it stuff back out of the tunnel and into the gulf before you could do anything else.

[applegrove]

14. oh well I tried. I felt like doing something.

[Webster Green]

15. Yes, it's extremely frustrating to watch.

I'm glued to the oil drum site. It's the best site for up to date info. Lots of oil workers and engineers commenting on threads there. They have been two or three days ahead of the curve on what's happening and what's likely to happen next. Check it out for very informed discussion: :hi:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6533

[doc03]

16. How about stuffing Rush Limbaugh's pimply fat ass

in the hole.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. It has semed to me this should have been part of the design of a blowout preventer

with the plate in a slot in the BOP, and you slide (probably rotate, around a vertical axis through a corner of the plate) the plate across the pipe if you need to. If the oil pressure is low, the weight of the plate (plus the water pressure at that depth) will hold the plate down on the bottom of the slot; if the oil pressure is high, it will force the plate against the top of the slot - but, either way, you should get a reasonable seal of the plate against a part of it.