Nuclear security

A physicist says blowing up nuclear weapons in the ocean to trigger tsunamis 'would be completely stupid'

Nuclear weapons are as awesome as they are terrifying. In an instant, their explosions can vaporize people, level cities, and obliterate military forces.

But could this fearsome power be harnessed by Russia or other nuclear nations to lob deadly tsunamis against an enemy coastline, as British tabloids recently reported?

If you ask a nuclear physicist, you're likely to be laughed out of the room.

"It would be a stupid waste of a perfectly good nuclear weapon," Greg Spriggs, a nuclear-weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Business Insider in an email.