Why even think about using Nuclear weapons on the spill?

[lunatica]

There are other bombs aren't there? Dynamite regularly takes mountain tops off and it's used deep in the earth in coal mines without the need for nukes. Conventional bunker busters should be used. That's exactly what they do. Bust up deeper into the bedrock. Why do people want to create a radioactive fallout zone in the Gulf? How will that make things better?

[LiberalLoner]

1. A huge shock wave is needed. You would need a HUGE conventional bomb

to achieve anywhere near the shock wave effects of a nuke. Nukes would work best in this case.

[charlesg]

3. Also, enough thermal energy to melt/pinch the long steel pipe and fuse a thick layer of mud

[lunatica]

6. Why do we need such a shock wave?

They could use more than one bomb and only the immediate vicinity would be affected. If they think frigging golf balls and other scraps and trash would work why are conventional bombs not enough?

[LiberalLoner]

7. I dunno, hubby is a nuclear weapons officer and said that's the only thing with

enough shock waves to completely collapse and fill in the thing. Other, lesser stuff would only open it wider. There are a whole bunch of tons of TNT in terms of the power of each nuke. Tons and tons. Whole lot more efficient to use a nuke than to try to haul hundreds of tons of TNT down there.

[htuttle]

2. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

[ladjf]

4. Way too dangerous. There is no way to precisely know the

outcome. For one think,the explosion might create pressures beneath the Earth crust that could simultaneously blow out dozens of other wells. Please no nuke.

[htuttle]

8. There's an enormous amount of methyl hydrates frozen into the sea floor down there

Any large explosion could set off a chain reaction much larger than intended and make the sea bed unstable.

[lunatica]

9. Wouldn't it also start a methane fire?

I hear it burns even on the surface of water if you light it with a match.

[stray cat]

10. If that is the most likely thing to stop the flow is the flow better?

this is uncharted territory - literally

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. I've seen this movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/

OK, that's not what would happen, but it still has Karmageddon written all over it.

[stray cat]

11. Progressives deciding whether they prefer unstoppable oil flow to a nuclear explosion

it should please the do something crowd but who knows?

[TampaAnimus2010]

12. They use conventional explosives all the time...

but generally to close wells that dont have high pressure oil coming through them anymore... they just close old wells. I cant imagine how you get enough explosives past the out-rush of high pressure oil to amount to anything.

As long as they drop the nuke down far enough so theres no risk of opening a fissure to the top, it should be fine. Blow the hole, seal it, and pour in concrete to finish it off. I would expect very little radiation to get out... and certainly less then the risk of letting it keep pouring more oil out.