Beirut blast probe points to bungled storage of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate
Posted on 08/04/2020 3:55:29 PM PDT by rxsid
It’s part of the Oklahoma City bomb.
It sure made a bang, from the video seen on Fox News!The explosion reminds of the 1917 Halifax Explosion caused by a collision between a merchant vessel and an munitions ship.The residual cloud even looks similar. That munitions ship, carrying TNT, picric acid, the highly flammable fuel benzol and guncotton, leveled a large portion of the City. Also the resulting tsunami wiped out a tribe of natives living on a nearby cove:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
The Beirut explosion was on this order of power.
False. The Grandcamp’s ammonium nitrate didn’t need to be mixed with anything in order to explode. It needs to be packed tight and get overheated-just like this. There was not one drop of fuel mixed with the tons of ammonium nitrate that blew Texas City to pieces in 1947-and that is a fact.
Carlos Osweda’s Twitter feed is the best explanation of what happened and why...it is a great thing for war prevention.
A friend of mine was Army EOD for 10 years. He says it could have been NH4NO3, but the color of the blast was way off.
He ran down the list of stuff that it wasn’t.
He said that there must have been an awful lot of iron or strontium lying around in the same place. He said that or the building was made of red clay, like Georgia dirt.
[I stand corrected.]
The US, in the wake of a globe-spanning war that saw widespread use of all kinds of volatile chemicals, a massive governmental apparatus that sprang up to fight that war and a general reputation for competence, failed to foresee the Texas disaster. There was no hope that Lebanon, with its mishmash of literally warring tribes, ethnicities and religions, could have foreseen this. Everyone’s too consumed in the day-to-day business of trying not to be stomped by the various protection rackets at work there for anyone to be thinking about the big picture (i.e. things like chemicals, the appropriate storage facilities and environment and a routine inspection regime).
(Most modern explosives have this pattern, an oxidizer and a reducer in the same molecule.) Ammonium nitrate, NH4NO3, "wants" to be N2 (elemental nitrogen) + H2O + O2 (oxygen). When it gets its "wish," it releases a nice chunk of energy quickly (i.e., it goes "boom").
Because it has "extra" oxygen, you can mix a fuel with it (diesel fuel, or basically anything that burns and can be finely divided and mixed) and get a bigger boom. That's why ANFO -- ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (#2 diesel) -- gives a bigger "boom" than plain ammonium nitrate. Diesel is obviously cheap and easy to get, so people doing blasting with ammonium nitrate (e.g., miners) always use ANFO instead of plain AN.
Ammonium perchlorate is the same deal; oxidizer and fuel in the same molecule. Ammonium perchlorate, with difficulty, can be persuaded to burn very rapidly, rather than explode, with the added fuels of synthetic rubber and powdered aluminum. And that's where you get solid rocket boosters like the shuttle used. It can also blow up if you don't treat it nicely (cf PEPCON explosion).
Saltpeter (potassium or sodium nitrate) has the oxidizer but lacks the fuel -- the potassium or sodium is already in a "happy" oxidation state and just goes along for the ride. It won't blow up by itself, but will decompose if you get it hot enough. If you mix it with a fuel (e.g., powdered charcoal and a little sulfur), the resulting mixture can be explosive, which is how black powder came to be.
It’s my understanding that given the right enviroment and over time this stuff will self-ignite.
Beirut blast probe points to bungled storage of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate
It shook our apartment too. Of course, we only lived a mile from where the Grandcamp was docked. As a kid, I thought it was an earthquake.
This was a tactical nuke. I don’t know if it was one of the lost suitcase bombs missing from Russia years ago, or a highwire tactical nuke recovered or stolen during a covert military operation, or even a contingency nuke acquired from one of the nuclear member nations. Anyone who has planned to use these weapons in the past, though never employed, knows what these weapons can do and what their signature is and what this type of weapon envelope looks like. I’m saying it now. I don’t care what the consensus is for public consumption, this was a small tactical nuclear bomb.
A groundburst nuke would have produced a blinding flash. No flash. There would also be all kinds of radiation signatures that any university-level physics department or nation in the region could detect.
Maybe the radiation readings are yet to come out or to be covered up but as to the the blinding flash, that is not a requirement or affect of every weapon system of the many different types (yes, there are) of smaller lower grade tactical nukes. The military’s of not just the United States but others have weapon systems that we are not privy to or have knowledge of. I still say it was a small military tactical nuke or a very crude, low yield nuclear bomb. 100 “mother of all bombs” could not have the same signature concussion or devastating effect that this incident shows.
Tinfoil hat stuff. You're saying every university and government within a 1000 mile radius of Beirut is in on the coverup? Nope, not buying it.
as to the the blinding flash, that is not a requirement or affect of every weapon system of the many different types (yes, there are) of smaller lower grade tactical nukes
Here's the smallest nuke ever fielded by the US --> video here
The blast yield is about 20 tons of TNT, about 1 or 2 *percent* of the yield of the explosion in Beirut.
Note: observers all wearing dark glasses to protect their eyes from the flash. Explosion produces blinding flash.
I rest my case. The only way you would *not* get a blinding flash from a nuclear device is if you set it off underground or under water.
That's ammonium nitrate with a lot of dirt on top if it, or it's an oxygen-poor explosive like TNT (which will give a dirty black cloud), or something. But not just ammonium nitrate.
heard from one source Dave at X22Report that the building was used to store bombs and missiles for terrorists. Sounds like a costco for bad guys. He said someone or entity caused them to explode before they were able to be dispersed to your local terrorists.
Well done, Mossad. I approve!
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