Montana Update

Don sent me these. Thank you.

Richland county, four (4) Bakken well completions:

•  CLR, Levengood 1-5H, TD 13,739 feet (short lateral), 282. 
•  CLR, Reimann 3-23H, TD 19,963 feet (long lateral), 208. 
• Whiting, Mullin 21-24-1H, TD 19,787 feet (long lateral), 452. 
• Whiting, Weber 24-30-1H, TD 20,225 feet (long lateral), 1,106. 

Sheridan County, three (3) Bakken completions:

• TAQA North, Jerde 10-1H, with two laterals, TD 11,610 feet (short lateral), and TD 7,850 (?), no IP. 
• TAQA North, Jerde 10-1H-2, TD 12,274 feet (short lateral), 14 (no typo). 
• TAQA North, Bolke 7-13, TD 12,319 feet (short lateral), 5 (no typo).

 Disclaimer: when I state there are no typos, I simply mean that I double-checked what I typed with what I saw from the original source. There could still be errors, and I could have other typos elsewhere. Check with original source if one has questions. These results would have come from The Fairfield SunTimes.

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To The Granddaughters

I continue to enjoy Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe. Today's excerpt:

Nuclear reactors are controlled by long metal rods containing substances such as boron and cadmium, which absorb neutrons strongly. When you want to make the reactor run faster, you pull the control rods a little way out of the reactor core. When you want to shut the reactor down, you push the control rods all the way in.

The first rule in operating a reactor is that you don't suddenly yank the control rods out of a shut-down reactor. The result of suddenly pulling out the control rods would in most cases be a catastrophic accident, including as one of its minor consequences the death of the idiot who pulled the rods. All large reactors are therefore built with automatic control systems which make it impossible to pull the rods out suddenly. 

These reactors possess "engineered safety," which means that a catastrophic accident is theoretically possible but is prevented by the way the control system is designed. For Edward Teller, engineered safety was not good enough. He asked us to design a reactor with "inherent safety," meaning that its safety must be guaranteed by the laws of nature and not merely by the details of  its engineering.

It must be safe even in the hands of an idiot clever enough to by-pass the entire control system and blow out the control rods with dynamite. Stated more precisely, Teller's ground rule for the safe reactor was that if it was started from its shut-down condition and all its control rods instantaneously removed, it would settle down to a steady level of operation without melting any of its fuel.

"It must be safe even in the hands of an idiot clever enough to by-pass the entire control system and blow out the control rods with dynamite." And all I can think of is Homer Simpson.