CNN 2010-05-12

Environment, economy, elections, education, all E words and all part of these Monday edition of CNN Student News. From CNN center, I’m Carl Azuz.

First up, officials are moving on to Plan C to try to stop the oil that’s gushing 1 into the Gulf 2 of Mexico. They’ve tried remote controlled subs. They’ve tried this giant dome 3. We are gonna have more on that in a second. What is Plan C? A lot of junk. Basically, you stuff the leak with trash and try to clog 4 the thing up. So what about that containment 5 chamber 6? The giant dome, they were planning to drop over the leak. The thing didn’t work. Crystals formed on the dome and made it float. Officials haven’t totally given up on the idea but they are considering other options including junk. As this oil spill starts to wash ashore 7, meanwhile it could have a huge impact on several industries. About 40% of the country’s sea food harvest comes from the Gulf coast. Fishermen, dockworkers, restaurant owners, all of them could be affected 8 by this, as supplies go down and prices go up. The biggest challenge is how to get all of this oil under control and then to get the oil out of the water. Allan Chernoff shows us how the government gets ready for these kinds of situations.

When trying to clean up a giant oil spill, how does the oil industry know exactly what to do, what techniques are going to work. The research is done right here at OHMSETT, the Oil and Hazardous 9 Materials Simulated Environmental Test Tank. This facility is run by the Interior Department’s, Minerals Management Service and it’s the largest of its kind in the entire world.

'Fire in the hole.'

Oil sprays into the water. A slick forms and expands. But it’s all intentional 10. Here the government creates controlled oil spills in a giant tank more than two football fields long. Operators create ocean wave conditions then they use various techniques to clean it all up. There are three primary plans of attack for cleaning oil spills in the water. Burn the oil or apply chemical dispersants to break it down, or manually remove it. All three are at work in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, cleanup exports are practicing manual techniques to remove oil. Taking oil off the surface of the water is kind of like peeling the filling of an Oreo cookie. You are skimming it. And that’s what all these various devices do. They skim the oil off the water. Depending upon the grade of oil, how heavy it is, you use a different type of skimmer. At OHMSETT, all different types of oil are sprayed into the tank from a moving bridge. Workers can test skimmers, various dispersants, even burning, all in a safe, enclosed environment that simulates the ocean’s salinity 11 and even its wave patterns.

We all know oil is lighter 12 than water. That’s an advantage when it comes to cleaning up a spill, because the oil sits on top of the water. Using those booms, oil can actually be pushed into that skimmer and then it’s sucked up using this giant vacuum.

Cleanup workers from private industry, government and 24 countries around the world have come here to practice and research such techniques, including responders trying to clean in the Gulf of Mexico right