Stop Schaliegas
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2020–2021
3:49 · 252K views · May 14, 2014
A short clip showing how the Soviet Union used a nuclear explosion to extinguish a blown-out, burning gas well.
HN cites it as evidence that small underground nuclear devices were used to stop well fires and leaks.
3 comments from Hacker News
Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years, but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of bedrock, and the harm prevented is worth the cost. I am surprised that the author dismisses it so rapidly. [LINK] this video
Small underground nuclear bombs were used to put out well fires. [LINK] this video A few ten megaton bomb would create a very small earthquake, quite probably only detectable by instruments. You'd need to wade into millions-ten of millions of megatons to create an extinction event.
In a similar vein there’s a story and YouTube video of Russians plugging an out of control burning oil well with a small nuke. Edit. It was a gas well here’s the link this video