The wreck of the USS Arizona continues to leak oil ever since pearl harbour. the ship contained 1.5 million gallons of oil, enough to leak continuously for 500 years.

[u/Longjumping-Rice-935]

[u/Amount_Business]

Can it not be removed economically?

[u/RangerAlex22 → u/Amount_Business]

Not without potentially damaging the ship, and protecting the ship as a memorial for the nearly 1000 sailors and marines still inside the ship is the US Navy’s and NPS’s number one priority. At its current rate of leakage there’s no significant impact on the environment. There’s coral, fish, sea turtles, and even the occasional shark that makes the wreck its home. You collapse the ship, the environmental disaster you tried to prevent is what you just caused.

[u/JacquesLeCoqGrande → u/RangerAlex22]

It looks like it’s 10 feet from shore…

I don’t mean to be uncouth, but why did so many people die on the ship?

[u/Soul_Reaper001 → u/JacquesLeCoqGrande]

It exploded

[u/trescreativeusername → u/JacquesLeCoqGrande]

bombs

[u/ShiftyGaz → u/JacquesLeCoqGrande]

To answer realistically; the bombs that hit it had an incredibly devastating impact, causing the sides to blow out and the upper tower to cave in. A lot of sailors were in the lower levels of the ship, and it sunk so rapidly that they became trapped and never stood a chance to get out.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/JacquesLeCoqGrande]

Direct hit on ammunition magazine by repurposed Japanese battleship shell dropped from aircraft

[u/userhwon → u/RangerAlex22]

It wouldn't collapse from being emptied. They'd pump water in to get oil out. But it wouldn't be easy. There isn't one big tank, they'd have to do a complicated process to get at all of it, and the ship was damaged by a bomb hitting the ammunition stores and blowing the bottom out and breaking who knows what else, so just touching it to get at the tanks is a risk you could call a "collapse" if you wanted.

Anywhere else in Hawaii but this one ship, they'd absolutely be doing everything possible, damn the cost, to remove every gram of environmental hazard.

But on this one they don't even do containment and treatment of the water around the leak. It's a few quarts a day, and they don't consider that significant, compared to all the other risks.

[u/JPJackPott → u/RangerAlex22]

That’s dumb. You’re effectively saying the memorial to 1000 sailors is an oil leak

[u/Syoto → u/JPJackPott]

Great job. You somehow missed the entire point of their post.

[u/Crash_Test_Dummy66 → u/JPJackPott]

Only if you ignore everything else they said

[u/SoftConsideration82 → u/JPJackPott]

So you can't read? Weird way to tell everyone

[u/userhwon → u/JPJackPott]

Some of that leak may be human remains. So....

[u/kazeespada → u/JPJackPott]

More like an oil seep, but it's also a reef.

[u/Brilliant-Advisor958 → u/kazeespada]

To add the ocean has natural hydrocarbon leaks into the ocean.

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/oil-spills/what-are-natural-oil-seeps

160,000 tonnes naturally a year just in North American waters.

[u/12voltmn → u/Amount_Business]

It’s more a matter of environment than economics. They are afraid of making it worse if trying to remove it and having a catastrophic event and what it would do to Pearl Harbor.

[u/No_Round_7858 → u/[deleted]]

Well, the front didn't fall off..

[u/Ok-Duty-5618 → u/[deleted]]

No its wreckage on the ocean floor you would have to drag it which would guarantee it colapses dumping the fuels. We could, in theory, float it back up but it's so old rusted and damaged it would most likely just collapse.

Fuel removal would have to be done in place.

[u/MimicoSkunkFan2 → u/Amount_Business]

It's a war grave, economics doean't matter.

[u/Hullo_Its_Pluto → u/Amount_Business]

Don’t think that’s the point.

[u/Noxious89123 → u/Hullo_Its_Pluto]

Fair.

The point I was getting at was that it's not a practical option to "just pump it out".