Iniziamo dalla notizia. Non è assolutamente vero che l’amministrazione americana ha intenzione, o sta solo valutando l’opportunità, di usare l’atomica per sigillare il pozzo della Bp. Non gli passa neppure per la testa. E per fortuna. L’uso di una atomica nelle rocce sotto il fondale marino nei pressi di un giacimento di idrocarburi se farebbe certamente saltare il pozzo rischierebbe di infatti di fratturare estesamente il fondale, magari di creare nuove fughe di petrolio o di gas, che oltretutto sarebbero radioattive. Rischierebbe cioè di determinare un potenziale disastro nel disastro.

Quello che è successo invece è che il ministro dell’Energia americano _ il fisico Stephen Chu _ ha inviato un team di esperti composto dal direttore del Sandia laboratories Tom Hunter; dall’esperto in scienza dei materiali e professore a Berkeley George A. Cooper che ha lavorato anche con la Nasa per la modifica delle tecnologie minerarie per l’uso su Marte; dal fisico nucleare Richard Lawrence Garmin; da Jonathan I.Katz, astrofisico della Washington university che ha studiato il cosiddetto “Mpemba effect” sul congelamento dei fluidi; da Alexander Slocum, professore di ingegeria meccanica all’Mit che ha decine di brevetti in robotica, biotecnologie e informatica.

UNO SOLO DI LORO E’ UN FISICO NUCLEARE, ma non importa: evidentemente ha eccitato qualcuno l’idea che tra di loro c’è Richiard Lawrence Garwin, classe 1928, autore del disegno della prima bomba ad idrogeno. Non importa che dal 1952 Lawence abbia lavorato alla Ibm, dove si è applicato all’algoritmo di Cooley Turkey e ha implementato le… stampanti a getto d’inchiostro prima di andare in pensione nel 1993. Qualcuno deve aver pensato che Garwin è pur sempre un famoso scienziato nucleare, in più due giorni fa la Komsomoloskaya Pravda aveva pubblicato un delirante articolo nel quale si affermava che gli americani avrebbero dovuto l’esempio dell’Unione Sovietica e usare l’atomica per bloccare il flusso di greggio. Risultato, in qualche giornale e in qualche televisione si è presa l’agenzia Ansa che dava la notizia, non la si è verificata alla fontesi è fatto due più due e la sintesi è talvolta stata: Obama valuta l’uso dell’atomica per bloccare il flusso di greggio. Balle.

In realtà, come indica chiaramente un comunicato del dipartimento dell’Energia americano, il gruppo di lavoro messo a disposizione da Steven Chu integra con incontri con il personale della Bp il lavoro che già da una settimana e mezzo il personale del Sandia national laboratory sta effettuando sulla fuga di petrolio, utilizzando i supercomputer del centro per la mappatura tridimensionale del fondale; per l’analisi della pressione nel blowout preventer (la megavalvola di chiusura di emergenza del pozzo che non ha funzionato); per l’analisi del flusso di petrolio e lo studio delle altre attrezzature da estrazione sul fondale. Tra gli obiettivi del comitato ci sono quelli di contribuire con idee e strategia per misurare la pressione e i flussi; assistere nella comprensione e analisi delle misure acustiche sullo stato delle attrezzature; utilizzare i raggi gamma per valutare le condizione della valvola di emergenza e delle altre attrezzature sul fondale; fornire assistenza tecnica sulla formazione degli idrati di metano (che hanno provocato il blocco del primo box di contenimento. Nda); creare modelli per comprendere le condizioni delle strutture; offrire suggerimenti tecnici sull’opzione di introdurre materiali nella tubatura per bloccare il flusso.

Chiaro? Qualcosa autorizza a dire che si vogliono usare le atomiche?

Ora leggetevi l’agenzia Ansa.

(ANSA) – NEW YORK, 15 MAG – Sempre piu’ frustrata per come Bp sta tentando di contenere la marea nera nel Golfo del Messico l’amministrazione Obama ha mandato nella regione un team di cinque scienziati nucleari per aiutare il colosso britannico del petrolio a fermare la perdita di greggio. I cinque esperti, che includono il fisico nucleare che ha progettato la prima bomba all’idrogeno, sono stati spediti nel Golfo dal ministro dell’energia Steven Chu per trovare soluzioni in gradi di fermare la fuoriuscita. Gli scienziati hanno visitato con Chu il centro di crisi Bp di Houston e continuano a lavorare con la societa’ come consulenti esterni. ”Ci hanno dato una buona idea”, ha detto Tony Hayward, il Ceo di Bp in un intervista con i media britannici, senza peralttro indicare di che si tratti. Della squadra di esperti atomici fanno parte Richard Garwin, 82 anni, che ha disegnato la prima bomba all’idrogeno, e Tom Hunter, capo del Sandua National Laboratories del Dipartimento dell’Energia. Chu ha anche chiamato in aiuto Marcia McNutt, capo del Sevizio geologico degli Stati Uniti. L’ipotesi di esplosioni nucleari controllate come metodo estremo per fermare una perdita di petrolio nel golfo del Messico era stata prospettata qualche giorno fa in un articolo del quotidiano russo Komsomoloskaya Pravda, secondo cui ai tempi dell’Unione Sovietica problemi simili sono stati risolti in questo modo. ”In passato questo metodo e’ stato usato almeno 5 volte – aveva scritto il quotidiano – la prima per spegnere i pozzi a gas di Urt Bulak, il 30 settembre 1966. La carica usata fu da 30 chilotoni, una volta e mezza quella di Hiroshima, ma fatta esplodere a 6 chilometri di profondita”’. Secondo il quotidiano l’esplosione sotterranea farebbe in modo di spingere le rocce facendo loro chiudere la falla. Il metodo tuttavia – e non e’ probabilmente un dettaglio da poco – non e’ stato mai testato sott’acqua. (ANSA) BN 15-MAG-10 17:37 NNN

ECCO ORA UN SERVIZIO DELL’AGENZIA DI STAMPA BLOOMBERG

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Katarzyna Klimasinska

May 14 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.

Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.

Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.

“I don’t think there is a lot of confidence in BP in Washington right now,” David Pursell, a managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. LLC in Houston, said by phone. Chu’s decision to bring in additional scientists may reflect that concern, he said.

BP’s effort to use robots on the seafloor to close off the well failed, and a 40-foot steel structure meant to cap the leak was scuttled when the containment box became clogged with an icy slush of seawater and gas. BP now is deliberating between using a smaller containment chamber to control the well or inserting a tube directly into the leaking pipe to channel the oil.

Chu said he’s tasked his team to develop “plan B, C, D, E and F” in addition to finding a way to stop the oil leak.

“Things are looking up, and things are getting much more optimistic,” the Nobel-prize winning physicist said after meeting with the scientists and BP in Houston Wednesday.

BP CEO Meeting

The group convened at BP’s command center in Houston yesterday, where they met with BP leadership, including Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward, the Energy Department said. BP is using more than 500 specialists from almost 100 organizations and welcomes additional help, Jon Pack, a BP spokesman, said by phone.

Their exact activities are cloaked in secrecy. “We saw some confidential and proprietary information,” said one scientist on the team, Jonathan I. Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Katz’s early work focused on astrophysics, but now he consults on a wide variety of physics puzzles, he said. He is a member of the JASON group, a think tank dedicated to researching complex problems for the U.S. Government, including the Defense Department.

Provocative Thinking

In a telephone interview from his home in Missouri, Katz skipped across topics: computer models for global warming, equality in college admissions and the Mpemba effect — the observation that, in specific circumstances, warmer water freezes faster than colder water.

Katz, 59 wrote articles that he has labeled as “thought- provoking” on his personal website, including, “Don’t Become a Scientist,” “In Defense of Homophobia” and “Why Terrorism is Important.”

“The best physicists have been very broad people,” he said.

Chu chose another JASON think tank member, Richard L. Garwin, for his oil spill taskforce. Garwin, 82, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus, is a military-technology and arms-control consultant to the U.S. government. He helped design the first hydrogen bomb in 1951, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“To do interesting science, the whole point is not just to follow the beaten track, but find something new,” Freeman Dyson, another JASON member, said about Garwin.

Flaming Wells

Garwin, 82, held a 1991 symposium of academic scientists, explosives experts, firefighters and oilmen to grapple with how to stem oil flows from hundreds of wells Iraq set on fire in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, according to a summary of the event. Garwin declined to comment on the meeting in Houston, but confirmed his experience with Kuwait’s oil wells in an interview.

BP has described conditions around its leaking offshore well as resembling those in outer space. Chu selected one scientist with experience operating on Mars, George Cooper, a civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Cooper once worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to modify mining techniques on earth for use on Mars, said Berkeley Professor Juan Pestana, who leads the GeoEngineering section in which Cooper is an emeritus professor.

Cooper did not respond to e-mails or telephone messages.

Five Dozen Patents

Chu also selected Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who holds more than five dozen patents for devices related to biotechnology, robotics and computer science.

On his website, Slocum describes his research interests delving into nanotechnology, precision engineering, “and staying down longer while SCUBA diving.” He did not respond to telephone calls or e-mails.

“He has a lot of creative ideas. One in 10 are really brilliant ideas, but nine are dumb,” said MIT professor Wai K. Cheng, a colleague in Slocum’s department. “You can’t miss that one that is brilliant.”

The team is rounded out by Tom Hunter, 64, from Sandia Laboratories, which conducts research for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Hunter has been with Sandia since 1967, and served as president of Sandia Corporation, which manages the lab, since 2005.

“We’re using some X-ray type technology that Sandia labs has,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said today in an interview on CNN.

Chris Miller, a Sandia spokesman, said Hunter didn’t have time to comment.

Last Updated: May 14, 2010 13:38 EDT

E DI SEGUITO UNA AGENZIA FRANCE PRESS (AFP)

by Kate Murphy Kate Murphy – Wed May 12, 4:58 pm ET

HOUSTON, Texas (AFP) – A brain trust of scientists has been assembled by President Barack Obama’s administration to help BP cap the well that has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three weeks.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, told reporters Wednesday that the “intellectual horsepower of the country is engaged in solving this problem.”

Chu said he had called upon the “very best” physicists, engineers, materials scientists and geologists from the government, academia and industry to “think outside of the box” in finding ways to tackle the spill.

“Things are looking up. Progress is being made,” he told reporters. Chu declined to explain the reason for his newfound optimism, saying simply: “I’m feeling more comfortable than I was a week ago.”

At his side, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said the mobilization of the best minds at the BP Command Center in Houston, Texas was not a vote of no confidence in the British energy giant’s ability to plug the well.

“They are not flailing around,” he said, noting that there is nonetheless, “a great deal of frustration” in the lack of progress in preventing an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude from streaming into the sea each day.

The gathering of scientists under Chu’s direction came as crews added the finishing touches to a small box on the sea bed it is hoped will contain much of the leak by Thursday or Friday and funnel the oil up a mile-long pipe to a waiting ship.

The so-called “top hat” is the key component in the latest bid to end the crisis set off when the Deepwater Horizon rig, 80 kilometers (50 miles) off Louisiana, exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

Two days later the rig sank, fracturing the riser pipe in the process and sending crude shooting unabated into the sea ever since.

An earlier attempt to funnel the oil up using a much larger dome failed when the low temperatures and extreme pressure at the sea floor caused an icy slush to clog the container.

Preparations are also under way to pump a “junk shot” of materials ranging from golf balls to shredded tires into the well’s blowout preventer, which failed to shut off the flow of oil after the explosion.

It is expected to take almost three months to complete the drilling of a relief well that could allow the well to be permanently sealed.

“There is a menu of technical possibilities,” said Salazar, adding that the scientists assembled by the administration were helping to tweak current strategies and come up with new ones.

They will also help collect information to help determine what kind of regulation is necessary to ensure that such an accident won’t happen again, Salazar said.

While BP is the responsible party, the company is not alone in its liability.

“There’s going to be lot of blame to go around,” Salazar told reporters.

The entire industry may feel the effects.

The White House moved Wednesday to boost funding for the clean-up of oil spills by hiking taxes on oil companies and raising the cap on a special liability fund.

The proposal calls for increasing taxes that oil companies pay into the oil spill liability fund from eight cents a barrel to nine starting this year.

The administration also proposed that the cap on the fund — set up to ensure cash is available to help pay for any clean-ups and damage caused by an oil spill — be raised from one billion dollars to 1.5 billion.

“What we’re trying to do is make sure that the Coast Guard and other responders can get access to the funds they need without having to wait for the appropriations process,” said Jeff Liebman, acting deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget.

The team sent to BP includes: Tom Hunter, director of the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Labs; George Cooper, an expert in materials science and retired professor from UC Berkeley; Richard Lawrence Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus; Jonathan Katz, a professor of physics at Washington University; and Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ogni commento è superfluo.