That's going to leave a mark...

[Bell206]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1290675854767513600

https://twitter.com/x/status/1290671474269986822

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

2700 metric tons of AN. That's probably one of the larger conventional explosions. Same ballpark as the Grandcamp and multiples of tonnage set off in the Tianjin, West and Oppau disasters.

So if my calculations are correct that the explosive power of AN by weight is about 1/12 that of TNT, then this would be the equivalent of 224 ton of TNT.

The conventional test explosion for the Trinity Test site was evidently 100 ton of TNT. So this was a bit over twice that.

The atomic explosion of The Gadget itself was about 17k ton TNT equivalent. So this was about 1/75 of the first atomic explosion.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

What reaction did you use to make the calculations?.

I just used the stated enthalpies for decomposition of both compounds per mole and their molar weights.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Not that simple. There's three different decomposition paths for ammonium nitrate. One of them is endothermic.

Yes, I guess the relative effectiveness factor is actually 0.42 for ammonium nitrate.

So this was the equivalent of 1.15 ktn TNT. Or about 1/18 of the first atomic bombs. Wow!

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I just noticed you said "both compounds" - what's the other compound other than ammonium nitrate?

TNT.

But it appears the relative effectiveness is 0.56. So even higher.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

This article places it at 1/5 of Hiroshima. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...atedly-warned-danger-hazardous-chemicals.html

Appears they forgot to correct for the difference between AN, which exploded here, and TNT. Typical clueless reporting by the MSM.

If you look at photos of what happened in Hiroshima versus what happened in Beirut, fairly clear there is a large difference in blast size. Of course, Hiroshima was an air burst versus this on the ground.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

And now they are reporting the ammonium nitrate has been stored there since 2014 when it was abandoned by a Russian businessman.