Golf Balls Fall Short Coping With 21st Century Disasters: Energy
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Diaper liner, sawdust, golf balls and shredded tires -- these are some of the items used to try and contain the oil and nuclear disasters that marked the end of this century’s first decade and the start of the second.
Sawdust and absorbent polymer were employed to plug radioactive water leaks at Japan’s Fukushima atomic station after it was wrecked by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Didn’t work. BP Plc tried golf balls and rubber scrap in 2010 to plug its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in what became the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Didn’t work, either.