Turkmenistan's leader wants 'Gates of Hell' fire put out | Hacker News Reader

Turkmenistan's leader wants 'Gates of Hell' fire put out

npr.org

61 pointsboulos24 comments

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...

>Wonder what has changed since then.

The monument is complete now. Time for next

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...

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).

Or, like, a tarp, but either way you have to worry about the gas going around if you're not capturing it just right.

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.

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.

Perhaps there is a nearby source of sand.

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.

The Chernobyl New Safe Confinement took abot 8 years to build at near 2B USD cost[1]. If fire is put out, a simple geoengineering tarp with piping underneath and dirt on top will do the job. Those are used a lot in covering up old landfills to capture the gas and avoid water leaking in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement

Dig a deep enough ditch around it to cut off the fuel. I'm sure Bob the Builder could do an excellent job for not alot!

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.

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 short BBC documentary[0], the standart practice in natural gas extraction is to burn off the excess and leaks(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

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.

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...

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.

Half-joking: turn it into a tourist destination? "Visit the Gates of Hell, then the pearly gates of Turkmenistan!"

It kind of is. When i went to visit, or rather almost accidentally passed it, there was one other person there. A 18 year old from Austria, on his way to Afghanistan, he hitched my ride for the last few km. We still had a burka that we had to have from traveling trough Iran so we decided to trow it inside, it seemed harmless as it should have just burned restless. Yet this did not happen. It was some silky colourful burka, which when thrown into the whole did not fly far and got tangled in 2 meters in the hell hole so it did not catch fire. I wonder to this day if its still there and how it looks if it has not burned and disappeared.

If all else fails, the nuclear option has worked before!

https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...

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

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...

Reminds me of "Fire In The Earth" by Liu Cixin [0].

[0] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250306081/toholdupthesky

Was going to complain about a rough day at the office, but then saw this guy job routine: https://youtu.be/RDwsPczaBCI

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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