(NYT) A government panel raised its estimate of the flow rate from BP’s damaged well yet again on Tuesday, declaring that as much as 60,000 barrels a day could be gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. The flow was already categorized as the largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history, but the new figures sharply increase previous estimates. Scientists on Tuesday estimated that the flow rate ranged from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day—up from the rate they issued only last week, of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. It continues a pattern in which every new estimate of the flow rate has been dramatically higher than the one before.How long before the nuclear option is back on the table? Seems to me that if we're going to have to nuke the thing in the end... well, we might as well nuke it sooner rather than later.
LSB: The nuclear option ("inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow") sounds dangerous and incorporates all kinds of political problems, but nothing else is stemming the flow of oil. Can it be any more detrimental to the environment than the long-term problems of even more oil in the ocean?
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