Large explosion in Beirut • Hacker News Board

Re: Large explosion in Beirut

#41

Post by KMag » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

detritus wrote: post #28

wintorez wrote: post #16

What was that red material?

This is what I've been trying to work out, but am having problems Googling for suggestions. The only things I've in the past read as causing red smoke are highly carcinogenic/toxic hypergolic rocket fuels (hydrazine?), but I'm having a hard time imagining anyone storing a cache of that sort of thing anywhere near a built-up area. The form of the explosion here points in my mind to something significantly more explosi…

The orange from hypergolic propellants is the oxidizer (nitrogen dioxide from the dinitrogen tetroxide disassociating at atmospheric pressure and temperature), not the fuel (typically hydrazine/UDMH these days, formerly analine was popular, many other fuels are hypergolic with N02/N204).

If the reports are correct that the explosion is 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, the orange is probably nitrogen dioxide. A high concentration of nitrogen dioxide indicates that the explosion was very oxygen-rich, likely pointing to it being accidental.

Ammonium nitrate is normally very very stable. Even mixed optimally with fuel oil, ammonium nitrate prills (pellets) won't reliably detonate with a No. 8 blasting cap, and in mining a small "booster" charge of TNT is used to get the ANFO going. However, very large piles of ammonium nitrate have caught fire and exploded, such as the Texas City disaster where a tanker full of ammonium nitrate burned for a long time, and then levelled a good portion of the town when it exploded.

Re: Large explosion in Beirut

#42

Post by wintorez » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

detritus wrote: post #40

wiml wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a number of reports saying that there was a large amount of sodium nitrate stored at the port (some sources say ammonium nitrate).

Just read this too, and it's looking like it's just under three times what Timothy McVeigh unleashed in Oklahoma City. This kind of unnerves me a little. Seemingly, a couple of tons of this not-entirely-impossible-to-get-ahold-of-chemical could seriously screw up national infrastructure. We've had decades of fairly organised terrorism here in the UK, so perhaps I should know better, but it's a bit of a shock to reali…

Isn't the sale of nitrates highly regulated in most countries?

Re: Large explosion in Beirut

#43

Post by detritus » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

wintorez wrote: post #42

detritus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read this too, and it's looking like it's just under three times what Timothy McVeigh unleashed in Oklahoma City. This kind of unnerves me a little. Seemingly, a couple of tons of this not-entirely-impossible-to-get-ahold-of-chemical could seriously screw up national infrastructure. We've had decades of fairly organised terrorism here in the UK, so perhaps I should know better, but it's a bit of a shock to reali…

Isn't the sale of nitrates highly regulated in most countries?

Most, yes, but then I'm unsure how complex it'd be for a well off and invested actor to play a 'shell game' with a few containers and get one of them filled with nasties into a major metropolis after a circuitous route.

The nitrates in question here apparently ended up in Lebanon after coming from Brazil via Mozambique.