Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/16/turkmenistan-wants-to-extinguish-the-fiery-darvaza-crater-known-as-the-gates-of-hell.html
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Just divert a nearby river or lake. Umm…
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Extinguishing a huge gas fire, you say?
This has been done a couple of times with small nukes.
Video is cued:
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Seems like putting it out would be worse than letting it be, unless you can guarantee capture of well more than 90% of the methane.
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I wonder why they’re not considering the liquid nitrogen approach, by the end of the Kuwait oil field fire crisis they were using that instead of explosives in some cases. The nitrogen displaces the oxygen, and also helps cool it all down. And it’s relatively cheap, as low as $0.13/liter to manufacture, and $0.60/liter delivered in bulk here in the US. Spray down the hottest areas first, then dump in the rest. Sell the video rights to the spectacle of dumping 20,000 liters of liquid nitrogen into a 1,000C crater to pay for it all.
More seriously, I’m somewhat surprised an energy company hasn’t drilled down into the “pocket” and drained it from a safe distance, which would solve both the crater-on-fire issue and contain the methane one, but it may be low-quality or otherwise unsuitable for commercial production. Or maybe the state of Turkmenistan doesn’t want to roll those dice again, having gotten snake eyes the first time.
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Putting the fire out may seem like a good idea, but what will be done with all the displaced demons?
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The town of Centralia, PA, has been trying to extinguish their coal mine fire for what, over half a century now? The town is pretty much gone, the fire not so much.
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Not a nuclear geologist; what could go wrong?
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Laughs in Centralia
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If I remember my Webelos training, the proper way to put it out is to place a large cookie sheet over it, cutting off its oxygen.
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