Actually, one recent work on n-body gravitational methods found that "nuclear explosives remain an indispensable element of the planetary defense portfolio." [0

Actually, one recent work on n-body gravitational methods found that "nuclear explosives remain an indispensable element of the planetary defense portfolio." [0] In particular, although these dispersion methods (as you pointed out) don't typically reduce the impact energy to zero, they offer a roughly 2 order-of-magnitude decrease in impact energy while requiring only month-scale warning. In contrast, diversion techniques which can reduce the impact energy to 0 (e.g. by shifting the impactor to 'miss' our planet) can require decade-scale to accomplish their goal. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521003921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...