[HN Gopher] Turkmenistan's leader wants 'Gates of Hell' fire put...
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Turkmenistan's leader wants 'Gates of Hell' fire put out
Author : boulos
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-01-08 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| user568439 wrote:
| Can't they use it to generate electricity? I know it can stop
| burning any moment, but closing it also has it's costs and risks
| of releasing methane instead of CO2 if not done properly.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Turkmenistan has lots of natural gas, why would you take it
| from the one site that is already an ecological disaster?
|
| I feel another Soviet nuke operation coming:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/02/archives/soviet-discloses...
| sparkling wrote:
| It would be a challenge from a engineering perspective, but
| yes. However there is no real incentive to do so, they have
| plenty of gas and oil in places that have accessible
| infrastructure in place.
| blamazon wrote:
| I guess putting resources towards this wasn't a priority when the
| same leader instead erected a literal golden monument to himself
| in 2015. [1] Wonder what has changed since then.
|
| [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arkadag-binasy-
| statu...
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Wonder what has changed since then.
|
| The monument is complete now. Time for next
| roter wrote:
| Reminds me of "Fire In The Earth" by Liu Cixin [0].
|
| [0] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250306081/toholdupthesky
| mrtksn wrote:
| Here is the president of Turkmenistan driving around the burning
| hole and being cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOTPht4kAL0
|
| Maybe he doesn't want anyone to outdo his coolness? I'm not
| joking, Turkmenistan is the most weird place on earth. The father
| of friend of mine worked in a construction project there and I
| remember him described it as "Not a real country but a theme
| park".
|
| According to this BBC short documentary[0], the standart practice
| in natural gas extraction is to burn off the excess(it's called
| flaring) to prevent uncontrolled explosions that may happen if
| the gas builds up. It's also better for the environment to
| release CO2 instead of methane, therefor the official statement
| given by the Turkmen president doesn't seem to add up.
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWUoAoeJb08
| rpeden wrote:
| If all else fails, the nuclear option has worked before!
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...
| Breazy wrote:
| I don't think that would work in this case. In that fire, all
| the fuel was coming up through a well pipe, and by detonating a
| nuke adjacent to the pipe they were able to crimp the whole
| pipe closed. But with this crater fire, I don't think the fuel
| is coming up through a single pipe but rather through the earth
| itself. Detonating a nuke there would probably make the problem
| worse, by shattering all the rock and making it even more
| permeable to the gas already seeping through it.
|
| This animation shows the nuclear pipe crimping effect:
| https://youtu.be/3kwQfjGnVpw?t=68
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Since the USSR tried it in 1979, the nuclear option has failed
| before! (See: 'Yunkom mine')
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-s-war-torn-donbas...
| [deleted]
| rackjack wrote:
| Half-joking: turn it into a tourist destination? "Visit the Gates
| of Hell, then the pearly gates of Turkmenistan!"
| throwaway89292 wrote:
| teruakohatu wrote:
| So instead of burning the gas they will release it into the
| atmosphere? Or is there a way to cap it and prevent release?
|
| Methane is apparently 33x worse for warming (over a century) than
| CO2:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/methane-burned-vs-me...
| Breazy wrote:
| From what I understand (after reading the wikipedia page about
| it) the crater probably isn't putting out much more methane
| than the rest of the ground in the surrounding area. Wikipedia
| says the flames are seen there because the shape of the crater
| allows the gas to accumulate into concentrations that support
| flames, while in the rest of the area the gas leaking from the
| ground is rapidly diluted by the wind, but is nevertheless
| being released.
|
| Looking at the thing, this makes some sense to me. There are
| flames coming out the side of the walls of the crater all along
| the perimeter, from only a few meters below where the surface
| of the ground would be. The gas is obviously very shallow below
| ground in that region, and unless the top layer of soil is
| impermeable to gas I think a ton of it must be leaking out all
| over the area.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Doesn't seem too big to cap with a concrete dome rolled in
| place on rails (similar to the Chernobyl sarcophagus install),
| with the methane captured and burned off (perhaps even used for
| electrical generation).
| cbsmith wrote:
| Isn't that effective like what the crater is currently doing?
| It's effectively already concentrating the methane and
| burning it off before it fills the atmosphere.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Or, like, a tarp, but either way you have to worry about the
| gas going around if you're not capturing it just right.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can a tarp withstand the heat currently generated? I
| suppose any material with high heat resistance, low weight,
| and not too gas permeable would do. Snuff the fire (once
| capped, it should naturally burn out from a lack of
| available oxygen), pump and productively burn the gas.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Since this comment chain was about the worry of methane
| release after stopping the fire, I'm assuming the fire
| would already be put out if necessary.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Perhaps there is a nearby source of sand.
| l0b0 wrote:
| Erika Fatland's _Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan,
| Kazakhstan, Tajikistan_ (originally published in 2014, so pretty
| recent) is a fascinating view into those countries from a lone
| traveller.
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(page generated 2022-01-08 23:01 UTC)