The army had plenty of practice defusing bombs in Northern Ireland. The most often used a tracked remote controlled vehical and performed "a controlled explosion" which I take to mean they fired a high speed blast of water (& air) to cut wires and provide a quenching of any detonator.

In the case of the IRA they often used Tantalum capacitors you would find in any radio. Wire them backwards, swithc on and they go bang. Perfect detonators and no one would suspect when they bought them (or stole them).