In general I'm a nuclear critic/skeptic, but in this case I agree, the nuke idea may not be that outlandish. Nothing else has worked. Is it not possible to engineer a nuke to yield more heat and less radiation? The engineering has worked in the other direction... My main worry would be that the explosion makes a bigger hole instead of sealing the hole.
Dopey Rangel was on the news today to run for re election. You know what I learned from Rangel? Take any problem, you name it and convert it to numbers, voila, it's a "sterile" numbers issue, takes the politics out of the equation and converts it into "take a look at the numbers" problem. Guy is a genius.