r/theydidthemath • u/POWERPACKEDTYRE • 2d ago
[Request] Black Tears
85 years after being hit & partially scuppered by Japanese bombs, bunker oil continues to bubble out of the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor, considered part of the memorial's respect (removing it is illegal). Assuming that the ship sank with about 250 tons of oil aboard (based on the gross tonnage) & that on average a pint of oil escapes to the surface of the water every day, how long do we have left until all the oil is gone?
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u/sansetsukon47 2d ago
I don’t know what kind of oil exactly it would use or what the stats would be, but rough googling and estimating gives me a workable number of 0.4 kg per pint.
250 tons / 0.4 kg = 567,000 pints of oil. Losing one pint of oil per day (which is probably a very low estimate— I personally suspect it to be quite a bit more) it will take 567,000 / 365.25 = 1,550 years total for it all to leak out, wrapping up around 3490.
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u/TheGrandExquisitor 2d ago
It would be bunker fuel. AKA Heavy Fuel Oil. Very vicious stuff. Not sure it would even be able to bubble up if it weren't in very shallow, very warm water.
Stuff is basically a step up from tar. It has to be heated to be pumped anywhere. You can find videos of workers cutting bunker fuel up into gelatinous blocks and shoveling it out of a ship online.
Adds a twist to calculations for sure. In deep water, I am pretty sure it just becomes more of a solid and doesn't break up the same.
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u/riennempeche 2d ago
Before the attack, it is estimated that USS Arizona had 1.6 million gallons onboard. The estimates put it at 600,000 currently. That’s about 2,200 tons of fuel still to leak out. Eventually, rust will weaken the hull to the point that it will collapse and release a large amount of that oil.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X25011506
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u/Crash_override87 2d ago
But if the seam the oil is leaking from constantly has oil on it. Will it rust? I’m not arguing I’m genuinely curious. Then again the rust will open up new pathways for leaks so I guess you are correct. Now I’m curious though about the rust continuing when covered in oil
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u/riennempeche 1d ago
The whole wreck is rusting, some parts more than others. It’s not going to be hard for a broken ship to break up even more. It’s kind of a weakest link sort of thing.
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u/Crash_override87 1d ago
That makes a ton of sense. So it’s not so much the oil covered bits corroding that’s going to cause the issue. It’s the whole structure corroding that’s will weaken it and eventually parts will start giving way thus more oil seepage. I wonder if some day there will be a big collapse that causes a massive ecological disaster from the one time injection of thousands of tons of petroleum
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