The U.S. Project Plowshares started in 1961 and ended in 1977. The purpose of the program was the application of nuclear warheads to peaceful civilian uses such as digging canals, creating underground chambers and nuclear research. The Soviet Union had a similar program called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. Ultimately, these projects were stopped because each of the proposed uses that would be carried out on the surface would result in nuclear fallout. Even the underground applications such as fracking would still result in radioactive materials in oil and gas. Now the president of the U.S. has been reported to have asked why nuclear warheads are not used to stop hurricanes.
In 2012, the website Live Science published an article that discussed the idea of using a nuclear explosion to quench a hurricane. Rachael Kaufman is the author of the article. She wrote, “The theory goes that the energy released by a nuclear bomb detonated just above and ahead of the eye of a storm would heat the cooler air there, disrupting the storm's convection current. Unfortunately, this idea, which has been around in some form since the 1960s, wouldn't work.” The problem with the idea has to do with the energies involved.
Kaufman cited the research of Chris Landsea who was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist. Landsea wrote that a hurricane could be understood as a super-efficient country-sized engine. This engine draws heat out of the ocean and releases it into the atmosphere. As a hurricane travels over warm water, its low-pressure system causes water to evaporate. Then, as the water condenses back out of the atmosphere, the heat the water contains is transferred to the atmosphere. Approximately one percent of the heat that is released by the water creates wind. The rest of the heat from the water becomes ambient temperature of the air.
A hurricane can release as much as fifty terawatts of heat energy at any moment. This is about fifty times greater than the capacity of the U.S. power grid. It is equivalent to the detonation of a ten-megaton nuclear bomb every twenty minutes. Kaufman said that using a nuclear warhead to try to stop a hurricane would be “about as effective as trying to stop a speeding Buick with a feather.” Hurricanes start as tropical depressions. It might be possible to influence the development of a tropical depression with a big nuclear warhead but there are many tropical depressions and it is difficult to know which few might become hurricanes.
Kaufman wrote, "Finally, whether the bomb would have a minor positive effect, a negative effect, or none at all on the storm's convection cycle, one thing is for sure: It would create a radioactive hurricane, which would be even worse than a normal one. The fallout would ride Trade Winds to land — arguably a worse outcome than a landfalling hurricane.”
The only practical way to avoid the destruction caused by a hurricane would be to stay out of the areas where hurricanes often make landfall.