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[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm only really guessing here, but I think that the presence of water would make it a bit different.

If anything, it'll make it more effective. On land, a lot of force escapes upwards when ground is pulverized and thrown into the air. Underwater, the ground will be pressed in, and more force will be going sideways.

[alway]

Or you could drop the nuke down into the underground oil resevoir. Detonate it, vaporize the entire oil resevoir. It may not help much, but it would make for an awesome even to watch on their leak cams.

[RedWarrior0]

I maintain that we should microwave the Gulf.

[LordMelvin]

Or you could drop the nuke down into the underground oil resevoir. Detonate it, vaporize the entire oil resevoir. It may not help much, but it would make for an awesome even to watch on their leak cams.

Right, because that's such a wonderful idea...

Less sarcastically, this is a bad idea because: 1, the sea-floor at the relevant location is weak enough that a nuke would cause a vastly worse environmental problem, 2, the resulting water dislocation would drive huge quantities of oil ashore, and, most importantly,

3: RADIOACTIVE OIL TSUNAMI!


y'know, as someone from about as far as it's possible to get from the spill on the East Coast of the US, that actually sounds pretty cool. Yeah, go for it...

[Greiger]

3: RADIOACTIVE OIL TSUNAMI!

Hmm... that needs something... ah! I know!

3: ‼RADIOACTIVE OIL TSUNAMI‼

As an east coast Florida resident I wholly support that option.  Especially if it just gets close enough for me to get a good view without destroying me and everything I ever loved. 

Those Tampa people think they're city is so great, That'll show them.

[Muz]

Lol, nuking it would be the most stupid idea ever. I just want to see it happen because of that. Also, if it was wrongly placed, the hole would get bigger, more horror.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Look, "nuking it" won't result in a tsunami, it will simply be a very big boom. For a tsunami, a very large amount of water would have to be displaced horizontally. It is, essentially, a tidal wave. An explosion not just underwater, but underground, will not be able to displace water horizontally. It will push the water up at first, but then everything will fall back into the gas pocket created by the blast, and water will be drawn back in, with very little net horizontal movement. In the ground, on the other hand, there will be a noticeable horizontal movement, ideally just enough to seal off the leaking wells.

I'm not saying it won't cause a great deal of environmental damage, mostly because of the "shooting fish in a barrel" effect on the aquatic wildlife and the irradiation of water in case of an actual nuke. But it won't create a tidal wave, and it won't cause a fireball because there won't be enough heat on the surface.

[cowofdoom78963]

I think that we should get a big rock and tie a bunch of dogs to it and drop it on the leak.

[RAM]

You could grant a pardon to anyone who dumps the body in the well. You could have a side-business selling a variety of ferrous fashions...

[smjjames]

Everybody is also forgetting that there is a ban on testing nukes, and using a nuke on that would go against that. Not to mention a planet sized can of worms of consequences and reactions.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's not like nukes havent been tested on the sea before. They dont produce tsunamis, people. They just produce lots of bubbles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBnzoxWFBwQ

[RAM]

And a couple of tonnes of high explosive ought to do the job...
It is just that, well, nukes are the magma of our world, they just make everything more Fun...

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Get some dwarven engineers in. That'll solve the problem.
Of course, it will create a whole lot of new, worse problems, but at least there won't be any oil in the sea. Probably.

[HAMMERMILL]

Nuking the oil well? and what if a hurricane rolls through and picks up the radioactive oil?

Then you'd have a radioactive hurricane made out of fire.

which is exactly what the Russians want.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Haha, wait. All we need is make engines that run on crude, and start a racing championship on boats with ramscoops. It'll get cleared up in no time.

But yes, it doesn't even have to be a nuke. A "kiloton nuke" is an equivalent of, well, one thousand tons of TNT. Gather up an equivalent in modern military explosives, and you'll get something that's just as good as a nuke, only a little larger and less radioactive. I think the US once did just that, gathering four-something thousand tons of explosives to simulate a nuclear blast. Since nukes are banned right now, nobody's stopping us from trying to do something like that again.