O Hurricane Melissawhich gained explosive strength between Saturday (25) and Sunday (26), is expected to hit the Caribbean in what experts classify as one of the most intense hurricanes in recent history. With this environmental catastrophe in focus, it is common for questions to arise whether it is possible to stop a hurricane with an atomic bombliterally “exploding” the hurricane before reaching the coast.
According to forecasts, the and southern Haiti with winds that can exceed 250 km/h, torrential rain and dangerous rise in sea levels.
The proposed solution, however, comes up against physics principles and, therefore, the Using nuclear weapons to contain hurricanes may not even change the storm and could cause more devastating environmental problems.
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Why can’t an atomic bomb be used to contain a hurricane?
According to the United States government agency for the oceans and atmosphere (NOAA), the The main difficulty in using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required.
Although the explosion of a nuclear weapon releases a large amount of energy, a fully developed hurricane can release thermal energy equivalent to a 10-megaton atomic bomb explosion every 20 minutes.
For comparison purposes, the 1993 World Almanac indicated that In 1990, the entire human race used less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
Furthermore, in terms of brute force, it would be almost impossible to concentrate a high amount of mechanical energy at a single point in the middle of the ocean. It’s worth remembering that.
The use of any explosive, nuclear or not, also does not affect the atmospheric pressure of a hurricane, which would need tons of air to reduce its impact. This is because, at the time of the explosion, the high pressure pulse propagates away faster than the speed of sound.
Finally, NOAA also highlights that about 80 weak tropical waves or depressions — which can become hurricanes — form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. This fact makes the idea of attacking these disturbances before they transform unproductive, especially since it is not possible to predict these phenomena.
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There is also the human component: the radioactive material dispersed by an atomic bomb, even if it were in the middle of the ocean, would reach the coast and cause incalculable damage to the population, whether through contaminated water sources or entire ecosystems being destroyed.
