Hi Nancy:
Forgive me if this is not quite cave and karst related, but ---------. A smaller but similar "event" occurred about 25 miles southeast of Carlsbad in 1961. This was the Gnome Project and the first test as part of Project Plowshare, a poorly-conceived attempt by Sandia National Labs at demonstrating the "peaceful use" of atomic bombs. The idea was to blow a big hole in the middle of the Salado Salt (about 2,000 feet thick there) and use it to store petroleum as part of our strategic reserve. In some ways it worked quite nicely, except for a couple of details. 1. The plug failed and the blast vented to the surface. Official news releases stated "Some radiation was released and detected off-site, but it quickly decayed". True enough, but the cloud of radioactive particles was blown northwest and right over the town of Roswell. I attribute that event to the next generation of natives behaving erratically and embracing the belief that aliens from outer space crashed near Roswell. 1. A blast chamber was formed (with a glassy, fused salt floor but with breakdown on top of it) and the surrounding salt remained impervious. The chamber remained a good container for fluids. The detonation created a cavity about 170 ft wide and almost 90 ft high. They actually drilled a shaft (a little over 1,000 feet deep) into it after the blast and lowered men down. I have talked with one of the guys that was down in there. Six months after the detonation, the temperature inside the cavity was still around 140 °F. Unfortunately the radioactivity in the blast chamber was so high and long lived that any petroleum that would have been stored in it would become too radioactive for later use. Duh!!!! There was also the idea that perhaps the cavity would be so hot that you could pump water into it and then produce "geothermal" energy. Not a chance! I got involved in the 1980s-90s because the Gnome blast was very close to the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) where I was the geotechnical manager. The WIPP is where a peculiar kind of radioactive waste is now being stored. Opposition to the storage facility was concerned that water might carry contaminated materials away underground from the WIPP. There is no fluid flow through the salt at those depths because under that much confining pressure (the weight of the overlying rocks - roughly 14 atmospheres) the salt flows plastically and there is no permeability (connected pore spaces) for fluids to flow through. You must have connected, open pores for fluids to move through rocks. The Gnome site was a location where you could prove that the containment of radioactive waste at the WIPP was safe. If no contaminated fluids flow through the undisturbed salt away from Gnome, they could not flow away from the next door WIPP site. But don't befuddle me with science and facts! DirtDoc Attached is an image taken inside the blast chamber before the entry shaft was permanently sealed. I think that is a person on top of the rubble pile for scale. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > On May 30, 2020 at 2:06 PM Nancy Weaver <nan...@prismnet.com> wrote: > > oops said the geologists. gotta love the scientific ’try it and see what > happens’ attitude > > https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/do-underground-nuclear-tests-have-fallout?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=52ab7f1d89-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-52ab7f1d89-71292933&mc_cid=52ab7f1d89&mc_eid=994603381e > Nancy > _______________________________________________ > Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com > Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/texascavers@texascavers.com/ > http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers >
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