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wild well control---the K shot

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JHOLLAND1

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western washington state
over the years I evaluated well drillers/roughnecks for hearing loss
one or two workers had experienced a casing pressure test blowout--non-contact
noise incident

research needed to put together a credible report uncovered interesting factoids---

in oil drilling, the deeper the reservoir field the greater the pressure

the ill-fated Deep Water Horizon platform tapped a productive field 18,000 feet below sea level---pressure at the blow out preventer was 9600 psi---max reservoir pressure of the Macondo field 15,600 psi

high reservoir pressures are typical for central asia oil fields--the setting of the linked video--Uzbekistan 1966

Soviet controlled territory allowed a unique solution for the three year old
gas well blowout fire--a 30 kiloton underground nuclear detonation which successfully obstructed gas pathway

How the Soviets stopped well blowouts, from back in the day... - YouTube


the soviet version of event illustrates military decapitation of failed wellhead preventer with artillery


Soviet nuclear test. Urta-Bulak. - YouTube
 
high reservoir pressures are typical for central asia oil fields--the setting of the linked video--Uzbekistan 1966

Soviet controlled territory allowed a unique solution for the three year old
gas well blowout fire--a 30 kiloton underground nuclear detonation which successfully obstructed gas pathway

How the Soviets stopped well blowouts, from back in the day... - YouTube


the soviet version of event illustrates military decapitation of failed wellhead preventer with artillery

There was a pretty good chance that the nuke could have just opened up the whole
gas field in one mighty swoop.
 
Eh, look up the natural reactors that have been found in South Aftrica....... see..... it's just a natural process.......

NOT!

Agree on chances of a big 'Oh Shit"..... but then, maybe they just didn't care that much. Yah think?
 
When I worked at Millstone Unit II,a PWR nuclear power plant, during construction, I heard something along the lines of the turn this thread has taken. Millstone Point is located very close to Groton, Connecticut and New London, Connecticut. New London is home to the US Navy's big east coast submarine base and training facility for submariners. Groton is home to Electric Boat, where many of the US Navy's subs, including many of the nukes have been built.

Working at Millstone, I was in the startup group, and was in with a bunch of fine engineers. Some had come up the hard way, sailing as enlisted men in the nuke navy and working up to Chief Petty Officers. Some others had been civilian employees of Admiral Hyman Rickover on his prototype reactor plants in Idaho Falls. Amongst the crafts on the jobsite, a large number had started at Electric Boat as pipefitters or boilermakers. The result was there was quite a pool of experience with nuclear submarines, which carried over quite well into the building and commissioning of Millstone Unit II. Amongst the people on the jobsite, there were quite a few stories about submarine design and life in the nuke navy. One story which repeated itself quite a few times was that the Soviet nuke subs did not have much, if any, reactor shielding. How our people knew this I never found out. What was also a common story was that the Soviets "wrote off" their submarine crews. Reactor control operators and people with similar jobs that kept them in close proximity to the reactors aboard the Soviet subs were said to be exposed to levels of radiation beyond anything we'd expose anyone to under any circumstances.

Whether Soviet naval officers or sailors who'd defected to the West gave out this information, or whether monitoring radiation levels around Soviet nuke subs disclosed this are all likely possibilities. Men I knew who were aboard nuke subs during the cold war era said that it was common for US Sub Skippers and Soviet Sub Skippers to play what amounted to "cat and mouse" or "Chicken" with each other. It reached the point where skippers could often recognize each other by the strategies and maneuverings, while acoustic signature of the Soviet subs was well known to our navy. I am sure there is quite a bit of monitoring of the comings and goings of the Soviet subs, just as I am sure they monitored our subs. It would not be improbable that some measurement of radiation levels surrounding a Soviet nuke sub were made by our own subs during those games of cat and mouse.

I am inclined to believe the stories that the Soviet nuke subs (and probably nuke surface vessels as well) had little or no reactor containment or shielding. Sailors the world over have a way of finding out stuff that is otherwise supposed to be "top secret" or "classified", and often times, know about stuff before their officers do. The big nuke construction site was this same way. I was fortunate to be taken under the collective wings of the ex nuke chief petty officers, the ex-civilian engineers from Rickover's prototype, and the trades who'd come out of the EB shipyard. It was quite a good education for me as a young engineer.

Without getting into politics (a forbidden turn for a thread to take), the expenditure of large number of human lives for the "good of the Soviet" was commonplace. The huge construction projects during the 30's-50's under Stalin took an untold number of lives. Stopping a natural gas well by using a nuclear device would be something the Soviets would do, without any thought as to environmental damage or much else. It is kind of symbolic justice that, on occasion, the planet earth reacts violently to people poking deep oil and gas wells into her. The big question is where the flow and pressure, once released from the gas and oil formation, was dissipated to after the nuke shot was fired. I wonder if the combination of the nuke shot plus the released flow and pressure of the oil and gas effectively "fracked" some of the strata and allowed the oil and gas to flow into areas where it might have been harmful (aquifers ?). It's kind of like releasing a genie from a bottle when a well like the one in this thread is drilled and blows out to the surface. Corking the well seems like it would just cause the flows to work their way to release in some new direction.
 
On a lighter bit - and to prove there are idiots everywhere...

Back in the 80s my one brother in law bought a cottage on a small lake near here. Later on we heard the story that went like this. Water was supplied by a spring that flowed pretty good. But the owner and his buddy decided it would be better to increase the flow. Dynamite was obtained and a shot made in the rock fissure where the water flowed. Shot resulted in a large piece of the shelf going up out of sight. Story was those involved ran in circles not knowing what to do (further proof of the lack of any knowledge in what they were doing). Rock came down through the roof of the cabin (taking out the 2 feet of plywood between two trusses) and then missing floor joists on it's way through the floor. Proof of the event was the large piece of rock under the cabin (was on piers) and appropriate patching. Brother in law also had to replace major parts of two trusses where the wood stove thimble went through the ceiling/roof, using single wall pipe -- but that is another story.

And by the way - result of the blast was the almost total closing of the water stream from the spring. Kind of appropriate with expertise involved.

As a combat engineer who has done his share of blasting I shake my head at some people - there are idiots dealing with nukes and conventional explosives the world around.......

Dale
 
My Father had a place in Northwest Ct that turned from a hunting camp to our home where I grew up.
When he was working at Pratt and Whitney Small tools it was the weekend getaway.
While constructing the house for the foundation they hit ledge.
At that time you could get a Farmers permt to blow stumps clear fields etc.
The story goes they would leave West Hartford Friday after work go threw Simsubury and at Ensign Bickford pick up enough powder caps then across the street at the package store
Enough Crown Rum and what ever else was on sale to make for a productive and
interesting weekend.
after the well was in it dried up so they decide to FRACk it
My father was ahead of his time in some ways!
They touch it off had a regular gusher and the wind took it right over the neighbors place and she had just hung out her wash!
Her explosion was as bigger than the fracking charge:)
Whiskey and explosives don’t mix but if you survive it makes for good stories!
 
We have a local character who is quite a skilled mechanic as well as a licensed blaster. He did a lot of specialized drilling and blasting in quarrying and heavy construction work, and even in "retirement", gets calls to come in as a consultant. He has a good sized shop at his place and he used to buy large air compressors and rock drills in need of overhaul each summer/fall, overhaul them thru the winter, and either sell them or put them out on rent during the next working season.

This fellow was a prince to our son's Cub Scout pack, letting the pack cut Christmas trees off his lot to sell, and not charging anything for the trees. In the local area, he has a mixed reputation. Some think the world of this fellow, as we do, and others have an entirely different opinion of him.

Once, years ago, on our railroad, we had a problem with beavers. The beavers, being no fools, seized an opportunity for a quick way to make a large pond. To do this, the beavers dammed the mouth of a large concrete box culvert that ran under a high fill section with the track on top. The result was the fill section, which was never designed to be a dam, became one. The fill section was about 25 feet above the grade of the land on either side of it at the point where the box culvert ran through it.

Water impounded against the fill section and made a pond for the beavers that covered several acres. The problem was that the track lay on an easement in NY City watershed lands, and getting rid of the beaver dam was going to require lengthy permit applications and similar. As an engineer familiar with earthen dams and similar from hydroelectric work, I was asked to take a look. I saw water had "piped" through the fill section (embankment) and was spurting with substantial flows. I knew it was a short time until the whole fill section would give way. The box culvert was dammed so solidly (it was about 8 ft square) that we walked into it and saw the mass of sticks and mud the beavers had closed it with. Very little flow came through.

We came up with all sorts of ideas as to how to deal with the beaver dam before the railroad fill section gave way. NYC watersheds was unimpressed with the idea that there might be a huge gush of mud, debris, coal cinders and clinkers (used as fill to build up that high fill embankment) into their reservoir and was not any help in the matter. Winter set in, and the pond froze over. That is when the local blaster got into the act. I got told to stay away from the railroad as, being a P.E., if I got caught up in the un-permitted removal of the beaver dam, I could wind up in some trouble.

What did occur was my buddy and the blaster walked out onto the ice, measuring off from the center of the track to the approximate toe of the embankment or fill section. They had established the centerline of the culvert. At this location, they chopped a hole in the ice. They cut down a sapling (locally known as a "popple"), limbed it, and fastened a charge of dynamite to the end of it. The ran the wires from the blasting cap up the sapling. The sapling with the charge was then shoved straight down thru the hole in the ice until it hit bottom. As they told it to me, the first charge they set off did not do much, if anything, to removing the dam at the mouth of the culvert. The risk was too heavy a charge would take out the whole embankment. A second charge, a bit heavier, was set off in the same manner. This did the trick. As they told me later, it was like flushing the world's biggest toilet. The mass of sticks and mud damming the mouth of the culvert blew through the culvert followed by a gush of muddy water and then the clear water as the pond drained. With that, the ice over the pond all gave way.

I have a soft spot for beavers, and really did not want to see them harmed. I wanted to live trap them and relocate them, but even that activity in the watershed area was tied up with permits and applications. My buddies felt bad about the beavers, as doing away with their pond in winter was possibly a death sentence for them.

This same blaster had another story. It seemed for a time, his work took him out of state for a week to 10 days at a time. His wife was at their home, where he had his shop along with a "powder magazine". As the story went, the blaster came home after being off working for 10 days or so, and his wife had "gotten religion". His wife confronted him, told him some mumbo-jumbo, and said God had commanded her to kill him because he was evil, or something on that order. The blaster realized his wife was not kidding around. He told his wife to pack her things and get out in 10 minutes. He went to his magazine and got a stick of dynamite and a blasting cap and came back into his house. He got the cap into the explosive in front of his wife, and told her to take her suitcase and get out, never to return or bother him again. He said if she was not gone in the next few minutes, he'd drag her out into the woods and blow her carcass to bits such that not even the coyotes and crows would be able to eat any of it. She realized her husband was just as serious as she was, and scrammed.

When my son's Cub pack was getting their Christmas trees off this fellow's lot, some people made reference to this incident. I still have a key to this fellow's gate, and he is first rate in our book. He did tell me he had pretty much gotten out of any blasting as he was having "nitro headaches", and then some kind of nervous system disorder as a result of prolonged exposure to the explosives.

Another friend of mine, not knowing anything of the blaster and how he solved his marital dischord, gave me a tee shirt. It says: "There are very few problems that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives". In this day and age, wearing a shirt with that on it could get a person in trouble.

Back in 1987, I had an incident with a truckload of explosives. It was a winter day, in the pre-cell phone era. I was driving a Power Authority Bronco and drove to a convenience store between Kingston and Saugerties, NY to make a phone call to my field office. There is a large powder magazine in that vicinity for Austin Explosives, a supplier of explosives to the construction and quarrying industries. We'd see their trucks on the local roads fairly often. As luck would have it, the parking lot of the convenience store was iced over. I parked, went in, made my phone call and got back into my Bronco. As I crept out of the parking lot, I pulled abreast of a "box truck" from Austin Explosives, with the orange placard warning that it carried explosives. Unfortunately, the parking lot had a good pitch for drainage running across my line of travel. Despite being in four wheel drive and creeping along, the Bronco started to side-slide. It came to rest gently against the Austin Explosives truck, held off by the swing-out mirror. No damage to either vehicle. I got out of the Bronco and found the driver of the explosives truck was in the cab of his truck. He told me he'd been stuck on the ice and had side slid to where he was a little earlier. In fact, he had no idea I'd landed my Bronco against his truck as it was that gentle a process. He'd been reading his newspaper and listening to the radio, waiting for a tow. In those days, there was no process to turn this sort of "collision" into a "reportable incident" with "emergency responders". I went back into the convenience store and asked who to call for a wrecker. A tow truck from a local body and fender shop appeared in about 15 minutes. The driver and his helper started paying out winch cable to pull my Bronco sideways off the explosives truck. When the wrecker driver's helper saw the placards on the explosives truck, he started to yell as to how he did not want to get blown up. The fellow working in the convenience store came out, saw the situation and also started to yell and run away. We tried to tell them both there were no caps on the truck by law, and nothing was going to happen. They were unconvinced and ran off the parking lot- the convenience store guy still in his white apron.

A passer-by walked onto the lot and said he wanted to buy a Lotto ticket and smokes. He hollered at the two guys who had run off the lot and onto the shoulder of the road, telling them he'd worked in quarries and knew there was no way the truck could explode as there were no blasting caps on it. This passerby grabbed the hook on the winch cable and started under my Bronco to hook it around what he could so the wrecker could drag the Bronco free. This was done, I paid the wrecker driver and got a receipt. The explosives truck driver saw no damage to his truck and that was the end of the "incident". The Bronco crabbed its way off the lot, and I was on my way.

I used to keep a couple of empty boxes from the explosives we used on one job in the back of my Power Authority Bronco. These used to get noticed by guys from corporate when I'd take them out on my jobsites. They'd sometimes ask if it was "safe" to ride in my Bronco. I found out that the boxes are supposed to be destroyed to get rid of the batch numbers as there is some kind of accounting process for explosives.

We had another character who lived in his junkyard between Prattsville and Lexington, NY. This guy is long dead. He was a licensed blaster, and as the local legend goes, he got into trouble one July the 4th for giving out blasting caps and dynamite to local young fellows to celebrate the 4th with. Another fellow, a local well driller, and also a licensed blaster, was celebrating the 4th of July years ago on his own land. He was setting off smaller charges of dynamite and blowing empty 55 gallon drums up into the air. Someone called the NY State Police, who showed up and confronted him. He had been drinking with his family and friends and did not see that he was hurting anything by blasting empty drums into the air on the 4th of July. The troopers told him to cease and desist, knowing he was a licensed blaster and lawfully had the explosives. His immortal remark to the troopers was something like: "And what if I don't ? What are ya gonna charge me with ? B W I ?" The troopers hadn't heard of "B W I", so asked him what that was. His answer was "blasting while intoxicated". He then told the troopers to get off his land, and said he'd broken no laws, and kept on celebrating as he had been.
 
Beavers may be O.K....but around here we got lot's of groundhogs.

The ^%$#@! state government, the lottery they run, has a groundhog
"Gus" as a cute furry mascot.

The city people don't know the damage the groundhogs cause to a farmer.
 

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Digger, now thats a good groundhog! About the only thing that will dig faster than a groundhog is a badger.

Re: beaver dams. Beavers can detect very small water flow rates, so it doesn't do any good to put an open drain through a beaver dam. But if on the dam side of the intake you use a couple of perforated sections of water well casing it slows the water velocity enough it is undetectable to the beavers. You can open the dam with a hoe and install the drain. The beavers will promptly repair the cut from the hoe, but the lake will be unable to refill due to the drain.
 
Joe / Doug -

These explosive / beaver / ground hog stories could get interesting.

In the 70s and early 80s when Fort Drum was an inactive post used by those of us in the Guard and Reserve it was a never ending battle trying to keep WW2 vintage roads open. That place is some 167 square miles with a lot of swamp (and open water) and at the time a huge population of beavers. End result was many roads turned into streams with their handiwork. If we wanted to do some demolitions training it was hard to get explosives - unless one agreed to make the 'target' beaver dams. We blew up a lot of them.

A good friend from the past was a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines and worked in many hard rock mines prior to my knowing him. The one story I recall was he was deep underground one day and several guys were carrying boxes of explosive past him. A shot was made at the working face (far away) and one of the guys sets down his box. The foreman asks him what is wrong. Reply was - didn't you hear it go off? Have to go back and get a good box, this ones now no good. At least the guy was not the nervous type......

We had a local incident similar to what Joe described last summer - not surprising as area makeup is similar. Had a huge explosion one Saturday. Some people got very concerned and pestered the authorities for a response. State Police eventually issued a statement that no crime was committed and case closed. Some were not happy but probably similar situation to Joe.

Dale
 
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