Analysis of the Beirut explosion?!

[K^2]

21 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I doubt it was a primary-secondary at all.

Yeah, with enough volume, you don't need a primary for an ANFO-type mix. You don't even need the AN and fuel to be mixed properly, and almost anything organic could become the fuel. For example, if one of the walls of the granary gave out, spilling grain, producing flour dust, that'd be more than enough to get it going. But it could have been any number of things, honestly. So many surprising things will happily burn with AN given volume and temperature. And basically anything within fireball afterwards would contribute to even more energy, including anything oxygen in the air could have reacted with, and anything that wouldn't have mixed well enough for ignition normally is helped by the shock wave.

That's why you have to treat any large quantity of fuel or oxidizer by itself as explosive. With large enough quantity of one, it will find something to react with to get the process going, and once you get the detonation, all of it will mix with something else in the environment to react. Granted, it's rarely going to be anything like 100% efficient or even close, but with enough fuel or oxidizer it won't matter. If just 10% of ANFO stored in Beirut would have reacted, that's still a yield of a small nuke. And it looks like it was more than that. Plus the remaining fireworks, plus any equipment fuel and oil, plus any grain dust that got released. At that point, it all goes into pile, and at least some fraction of that is going to react with something making that fireball even bigger.

[magnemoe]

17 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

He used both ANNM and AN+diesel; I was referring to the latter above. 70% of his bomb was ANNM; 30% was AN+diesel.

An relative of mine work in rock blasting and for large blasts they use an ammonium based explosive, as he tell it like Bevik the Norwegian McVeigh used but he has an better fuel source. 
And yes they can get multiple pump trucks like the ones pumping concrete. 
Else they have to carry buckets. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

This was already touched on, but the AN is the fertilizer. You have to mix it with hydrocarbons to make it more like TNT or semtex. Mixing with fuel oil gets it up to around 70% TNT equivalent. The correct proportion of diesel (which is I believe what these types of ships use) can get it up to 78%; that's what McVeigh used in the OK bombing.

You don't have to mix it with hydrocarbons, though that makes it much more severe. The Oppau explosion happened in an AN silo at a manufacturing plant, nothing in there but old, crusty fertilizer and a bunch of workers dropping dynamite onto it (stupid, but that was standard procedure at the time, so it wasn't really their fault). That one was smaller, but also quite devastating. That said, since the AN in this case was not in a silo, I doubt it was lying around in a huge pile. It was likely in some sort of bag, and a plastic bag is very much a fuel source. 

Once it went off, anything flammable in the area contributed to the mess. In a port, there will be no shortage of these things, and once the grain silo broke up, it only got worse. I wouldn't be surprised if a measurable fraction of the yield was a dust explosion from the grain.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Guest

[sevenperforce]

3 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

You don't have to mix it with hydrocarbons, though that makes it much more severe.

That's what I said -- "you have to mix it with hydrocarbons to make it more like TNT", in terms of explosive yield. Just a small percentage of fuel by weight will double the yield.

4 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

I wouldn't be surprised if a measurable fraction of the yield was a dust explosion from the grain.

Detonation velocity in even the most perfectly-mixed grain dust explosions is under Mach 5 so I suspect all of the AN+whatever detonated well before the blast hit the silo.

Pixel counting and a back-calculation of yield from the seismic data puts the fireball size at a radius of 80-90 meters. Since it appeared completely within a single frame, the minimum detonation velocity we are dealing with is Mach 7 (80 meters / 1/30 sec = 2400 m/s = Mach 6.99).

Update -- according to this BBC article, people from the University of Sheffield estimate it at "about one tenth" of Little Boy, so definitely at least a kiloton. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53670839

[kerbiloid]

I would just remind that AN was not mixed with fuel, so any AN-based explosives are irrelevant here.

And it's not just an oxidizer. It contains ammonia as fuel, unlike other saltpeters.

Edited August 6, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

If it was packed into plastic bags, then it was mixed with fuel, because plastic bags burn. Badly, but when you've got nearly 3000 tons of the stuff, it doesn't really matter. At this scale, anything remotely flammable makes the already bad situation much worse. Plastic bags, wooden pallets (another common warehouse item), wooden shelves...

Of course, that it doesn't need fuel to explode is also true, especially when it's old. It's not very sensitive even then, but a crate fireworks going off nearby is more than enough to overcome that. 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Guest

[K^2]

Even if it wasn't mixed with any fuel before the explosion, once the fireball expanded to include the entire warehouse with everything in it it was a very nice fuel-oxidizer mix. That's just kinematics the explosion. The larger it is, the less granularity of components matters. Any fuel, wood, plastic, oil on site becomes part of the mix. So regardless of how it started, the explosion we got was effectively an ANFO explosion.

[kerbiloid]

I would remind that AN is not AM to explode with everything it touches.

And 2 700 t was its original amount 7 years ago, stored in the storehouse next to the water.
So, we have absolutely no info, how much has become wet, has decayed, has been stolen, has been ditrtibuted between different compartments, and all of that should reduce the really reacted amount  for several times.

But come on, go on.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And 2 700 t was its original amount 7 years ago, stored in the storehouse next to the water.
So, we have absolutely no info, how much has become wet, has decayed, has been stolen, has been ditrtibuted between different compartments, and all of that should reduce the really reacted amount  for several times.

Any impurities will only make it worse. It becoming wet doesn't matter, AN, as you pointed out yourself, is its own fuel and oxidizer. It can even explode underwater (if not dissolved), though humidity does make it less explosive. It doesn't decay, either, being a pretty stable compound. As for theft, how do you make a dent in 2700T of AN? And for what? All right, some people had stolen an entire beach, once, and a gang in Poland and Russia specialized in stealing bridges, but there's not much market in Lebanon for sacks full of fertilizer. Certainly not enough to justify going through the trouble to steal a significant amount.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I would remind that AN is not AM to explode with everything it touches.

Of course it's not, but when the thing that touches it is an exploding firework, it explodes just fine. People at Oppau plant were also thinking "it's not all that explosive". In fact, they were thinking that a concentration below 60% couldn't explode at all, which is true, but does not account for the fact old AN tends to increase in concentration. As such, tossing dynamite at a pile of old AN was a rather less of a good idea than they thought. They only blew up about 500T, but it still flattened the chemical plant.

[kerbiloid]

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Any impurities will only make it worse.

Flammable impurities. Non-flammable ones don't. Including water, neutral salts, oxides, hydroxides.

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

AN, as you pointed out yourself, is its own fuel and oxidizer. It can even explode underwater (if not dissolved), though humidity does make it less explosive.

Orly? Doesn't make less explosive?

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

It doesn't decay

It is very hygroscopic and happily decays.

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

As for theft, how do you make a dent in 2700T of AN? And for what? 

Didn't understand the phrase.
2 700 t is official amount of the AN cargo from the ship arrested 7 years ago, and stored in that warehouse.

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

All right, some people had stolen an entire beach, once, and a gang in Poland and Russia specialized in stealing bridges, but there's not much market in Lebanon for sacks full of fertilizer.

Fertlizer always has market in any agricultural country(side), especially with poor soil.
I should remind that they were welding to enforce the doors and windows of the storehouse to keep keeping the arrested cargo safely.

39 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Of course it's not, but when the thing that touches it is an exploding firework, it explodes just fine.

"Burns" doesn't mean "explodes".
Explosion is detonation, fast burning caused by the adiabatic wave of pressure.
Any other kind of burning is deflagration, caused by the wave of temperature.
Of course, all nitrates in that storehouse have been burned, together with other flammables.
But as they were not densely packed and closed in limited volume, they mostly burned, not exploded. Raised the local temperature and powered local fire, but not caused the shockwave.

If AN was so apocalyptic like it's described in this thread, nobody would bother with TNT.

Upd.
And fuel-air detonation doesn't make sense here at all. The AN was in bags.
So, the inner bags of the heap exploded (they are densely packed by the pressure of others, laying on top and aside), but most of other bags should just burn without giving a shockwave, giving a lot of red smoke.
So, any estimation above maybe one tenth of total amount as exploded looks fantastic.

(Of course, I can be wrong, as my childhood was not spent on a rocket base with window flies flapping from occasional nuclear blasts outdoors.
Though, mineral fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals were enough familiar in agricultural terms (no, not a peasant))

Edited August 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If AN was so apocalyptic like it's described in this thread, nobody would bother with TNT.

TNT has a similar yield to ANFO, actually (which is only 6% "FO" by weight, BTW, AN mixed up with plastic bags and flammable gunk is almost as good). It has different properties, and is more useful in some applications. They are both extremely common and cheap explosives. Most notably, TNT is a secondary explosive, while ANFO is classified as a tertiary, which means the latter is harder to set off. 

9 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Didn't understand the phrase.
2 700 t is official amount of the AN cargo from the ship arrested 7 years ago, and stored in that warehouse.

What I meant was that it would be difficult to steal so much AN, even over 7 years, that the amount that exploded would have been much less than 2700T. They were welding the doors not to prevent theft, but to prevent random people from fooling around with a dangerous substance. 

21 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Orly? Doesn't make less explosive?

It does. Read what I said. Water content does make it harder to detonate it, but the explosion will be just as strong. You need to get the water content above 60% to stop it from exploding. It will pull water from air, but only to about 60%, and the water will not be evenly distributed.

23 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It is very hygroscopic and happily decays.

It is. Because of that, it is usually transported in sealed plastic bags. And it doesn't decay from that, as much as coalesce into a solid mass, which can be problematic (see Oppau explosion for an example). A 6 year old AN is still AN, only now its composition is very uneven and unpredictable. Decay products (oxides and other stuff) are marginal. 

8 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

"Burns" doesn't mean "explodes".

Fireworks do explode, especially if you set them on fire. If you don't believe me, try looking outside the next time New Year's Eve rolls around. They were burning at first, but then they exploded, setting off the whole mess. That's what happens in every single bomb that uses AN.

[kerbiloid]

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

TNT has a similar yield to ANFO, actually

AN is not ANFO, it's AN.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

What I meant was that it would be difficult to steal so much AN, even over 7 years

7 years of noone's cargo from the arrested ship abandoned long ago by both crew and owner with no perspectives to be payed, and desired by every peasant around is a whole eternity of time.

2 700 t is not so much, it's just one ship of many.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

They were welding the doors not to prevent theft, but to prevent random people from fooling around with a dangerous substance. 

Usually, people don't get into another one's storehouse to make a fire. Usually they have much simpler and reasonable reasons, and are interested in having it safe as long as possible, in Beirut or anywhere else.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Water content does make it harder to detonate it, but the explosion will be just as strong.

Explosion of wet AN can't be as strong just by definition. The wave of pressure should heat non-flammable ballast like water, and spends energy on it.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

You need to get the water content above 60% to stop it from exploding.

From formally exploding at any degree of this word.
Just at 60% wetness all energy gets spent on the ballast, and the shockwave doesn't appear at all.
The wetter it gets, the weaker it explodes.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

it is usually transported in sealed plastic bags.

Btw, afair, it's not clearly known if it was originally bulked, packed in other bags and later repacked, or this is its original casing.
And even sealed bags can be damaged, especially when they are noone's and nobody really cares.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

And it doesn't decay from that, as much as coalesce into a solid mass, which can be problematic

It decays like any other nitrate and any other salt of ammonia, just slowly. At 200° it decays immediately.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Fireworks do explode, especially if you set them on fire.

Then get clear, fireworks or AN gave the main energy of explosion.
Just FYI, the fireworks composition includes its own oxidizer, lol. Highly likely, a nitrate. They don't have much to deal with AN.

30 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

That's what happens in every single bomb that uses AN.

Any bomb has a strong casing, first of all. The stored AN didn't have any strong casing except other bags, laying above.

So, just small part of bags could/did explode.

Also, AN is much weaker that TNT, so the only reason of using it instead is its cheapness.

Edited August 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

Some personal remarks have been removed. Please keep the discussions polite. 

[Codraroll]

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

7 years of noone's cargo from the arrested ship abandoned long ago by both crew and owner with no perspectives to be payed, and desired by every peasant around is a whole eternity of time.

Most likely we're talking about sacks of several hundred kilos, wrapped in plastic, labeled in a language nobody could read. I was taken off a Russian ship after all. You'd need a forklift to move the stuff intact, and to even wish to steal it, you'd need to know what it was and what it was good for. It would be just as reasonable to assume the sacks to contain some industrial waste product intended for a landfill somewhere. A dockworker in Beirut could easily assume "нитрат аммония" meant "contaminated sand" or "residue from plastic production" or "salt slag" or something like that. Just because it's lying around unguarded for years, doesn't mean it's attractive to steal. Precisely because it was lying around unguarded for years, any thief would likely draw the conclusion that the stuff was not worth stealing.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Codraroll

[kerbiloid]

4 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Most likely we're talking about sacks of several hundred kilos, wrapped in plastic, labeled in a language nobody could read. I was taken off a Russian ship after all. 

Afair, it was exported by the (mostly ?) Russian businessman, departured from Batumi (Georgia) on the Moldovan ship with Russian-Ukrainian crew for export, with Beirut as transit port, so I believe the captions were international.
Also, I guess there is a lot of people in Lebanon who speak Russian or at least can google the cyrillic name.

8 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

sacks of several hundred kilos

Why so heavy? Probably, usual one-man bags, tens kg. They should load/unload them, after all.

10 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

to even wish to steal it, you'd need to know what it was and what it was good for.

That's the least of the problems. A lot of people know what they keep in the storehouse.

***

I don't blame anybody. Vice versa, I find this very expectable. Otherwise why need doors and locks.

[DDE]

18 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

labeled in a language nobody could read

From the GOST on ammonium nitrate, section on packaging:

Quote

Каждое грузовое место должно иметь маркировку по ГОСТ 19433, характеризующую вид и степень опасности груза.

Маркировка должна содержать: знак опасности (чертеж 5), транспортное наименование: АММОНИЯ НИТРАТ/AMMONIUM NITRATE, номер ООН и классификационный шифр 5113.

Below is a rendition of чертеж 5:

Spoiler

 

[Codraroll]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Why so heavy? Probably, usual one-man bags, tens kg. They should load/unload them, after all.

This isn't the 1800s anymore with bags being loaded/unloaded by dock workers walking up and down the gangplank. Bulk material shipped in sacks tend to come in very large sacks to be moved by crane or forklift; I think a standard one is 750 liters. Small sacks are mostly for consumer packaging. For large scale applications you wouldn't want the hassle of opening hundreds of bags per ton of product and be left with a pile of wrapping bigger than the product they contained.

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

750 liters

When, one hole - 750 liters of non-flammable wet waste.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

AN is not ANFO, it's AN.

ANFO is "Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil". Fuel Oil is 6%, AN is 94%, by weight. By adding 6% of anything flammable to AN, you make a bomb that is almost as good as ANFO.

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Any bomb has a strong casing, first of all. The stored AN didn't have any strong casing except other bags, laying above.

Doesn't matter. Once the shockwave hits the explosive, it detonates. It is not heat that causes it, but impact. No need for casing. Solid explosives generally detonate across their entire volume, they do not get scattered around.

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Then get clear, fireworks or AN gave the main energy of explosion.

Fireworks initiated the explosion of AN, which gave the main energy of the explosion. It doesn't matter what they're made of. Again, a pressure wave is responsible for causing the detonation in this case, and an exploding firework provides that a pressure wave. 

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Usually, people don't get into another one's storehouse to make a fire. Usually they have much simpler and reasonable reasons, and are interested in having it safe as long as possible, in Beirut or anywhere else.

No, but they might get into a warehouse to steal something else, spend a night in there, or whatever. The AN in question was seized from an abandoned freighter. If it wasn't for explosive hazard, nobody would have cared if it was stolen. In fact, if it happened to quietly disappear one night, the port authorities would have been happy, because they already knew it could explode and were trying to get rid of it. Better than to have it disappear very loudly, like it did...

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also, AN is much weaker that TNT, so the only reason of using it instead is its cheapness.

Not so. Pure AN is indeed much weaker, but ANFO has a detonation velocity 4200m/s. TNT has a detonation velocity of 6900m/s and a higher density, so they are quite comparable by weight. Price is definitely a factor, though, but TNT, being a secondary, is often used used to initiate ANFO, so they're frequently used together.

[snip]

Edited August 7, 2020 by Guest

[Codraroll]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

When, one hole - 750 liters of non-flammable wet waste.

The risk of which could be significantly reduced with some plastic wrapping. Bulk bags are used to transport things like cement, grain, or other products that all become spoiled by water, all the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_intermediate_bulk_container

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

ANFO is "Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil". Fuel Oil is 6%, AN is 94%, by weight. By adding 6% of anything flammable to AN, you make a bomb that is almost as good as ANFO.

If it was almost good, why make ANFO?
Who would put FO into agricultural AN?

That's AN, not ANFO.

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Doesn't matter.

It exactly matters. It's basics.

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Fireworks initiated the explosion of AN, which gave the main energy of the explosion.

Then fireworks play no role, as it would be an electric sparkle or a cigarette with same result.

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Solid explosives generally detonate across their entire volume, they do not get scattered around.

AN is not solid, it's powder, and not pressed.

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

No, but they might get into a warehouse to steal something else, spend a night in there, or whatever. The AN in question was seized from an abandoned freighter. If it wasn't for explosive hazard, nobody would have cared if it was stolen. In fact, if it happened to quietly disappear one night, the port authorities would have been happy, because they already knew it could explode and were trying to get rid of it.

People enforce doors and windows against invaders, not against exactly firestarters. And most of invaders are not going to set the world on fire, they are just freeloaders.

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Pure AN is indeed much weaker, but ANFO

If you repeat "ANFO" three times more, the FO anyway will not magically appear in the AN.

[snip]

5 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Are you peddling a conspiracy theory that it wasn't AN that exploded

Of us two just you are adding something to the pure AN version. And exactly your ANFO is the conspiracy theory. For me, all is clear without it.

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

The risk of which could be significantly reduced with some plastic wrapping. Bulk bags are used to transport things like cement, grain, or other products that all become spoiled by water, all the time:

I don't argue against big bags, I just don't see what do they change.
It's possible to bring out a big bag as well as small one, if you have a pickup and can open the door, or cut the big bag and reload it into small ones.
 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Vanamonde

[RCgothic]

Well it clearly hadn't been stolen because the size of the blast indicates the vast majority exploded.

Certainly no-one stole it and then replaced it with hundreds of tonnes of more energetic explosive.

I find conspiracy theorising about this disaster to be in extremely poor taste. It was an industrial accident involving a warehouse full of improperly stored confiscated ammonium nitrate, an adjacent warehouse full of fireworks, and a welding accident.

There's nothing more to it than that.

[James Kerman]

More content has been removed. You are welcome to discuss issues however personal comments directed at another member do not advance the discussion, detract from the conversation and violate forum rule 2.2d. Further violations in this vein will be removed and dealt with accordingly.  Thank you for your understanding.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Certainly no-one stole it and then replaced it with hundreds of tonnes of more energetic explosive.

Exactly. And I find unnecessary all explanations including anything but AN.

More of that, I find the detonated amount (and so, the yield value) of AN overestimated.
I believe, the damages we can see on the video, could be caused even by much lesser yield, and I explained, why.

(Briefly: we can see the walls, floors, and balcony platforms not deformed, while glasses are broken and sidings are scratched off, the damaged constructions are mostly made of tin sheets put on pipe trusses.
No "evaporated buildings" or so, mentioned by others. The silos right next to GZ is destroyed but still stays with its full height, not ruined to the basement.
The casualties are mostly caused by broken glasses and furniture, not directly by shockwave.).

Of course, everybody may count different, but that's my current estimation. (I constantly repeat every time, "estimation").

My current estimation is "probably first tens of tonnes of TNT equivalent (i.e. a hundred or two of tonnes of AN)", and I can't see how this can deal with anything but physics.
If later, with more data, I recompile and get another value, I can change my estimation. But currently I don't see reasons to do it, as yet I have seen no objections seeming actual for me.

The lower yield should have an explanation.
So, I find several reasons why the reacted mass could be lower than total.

1)  AN got wet.
Pro: AN is hygroscopic and tend to get wet in wet medium, say on the sea shore.
Contra:  It was in sealed bags.
Anti-Contra: Some bags could be damaged, or the cargo was initially bulked. Also, any sealed bags can let the water slowly pass with time (7 years).

2) AN decayed with time.
Pro: It does. Slowly, but anyway.

3) AN could be partially stolen.
Pro: People sometimes do it, and the cargo was abandoned for years and probably at all (for financial and legal reasons). The storehouse entrances were being enforced exactly at that time, what let's presume existence of trespassers.
Contra: Bags could be large and hard to steal. They were enforcing it against trespassers who could light a fire inside.
Anti-Contra: Any bag could be easily reloaded. They were enforcing it against any trespassers at all, and most often trespassers tend to take something rather than make a fire in a powder chamber.

So.
We don't know, how much wet was the AN, but it could be and probably was wet to unknown degree.
We don't know, how much decayed was the AN, but it could be and probably was decayed to unknown degree.
We don't know, how much AN was actually there after 7 years and unknown number of probably existing trespassers (otherwise why enforce the entrnces).

So, the real amount of flammable AN could be and probably was smaller, down to unknown value.

Also, as only encased part of AN could effectively explode rather than burn without detonation, probably only the lower layer of the bags has exploded, so other bags just burned and produced that cloud of red smoke.

So, I believe, we can presume that real amount of exploded AN was significantly less than the original, 7-year old, 2 700 t amount.
It can be tens of tonnes of TNT equivalent, or hundreds of tonnes of TNT equivalent.
Currently my estimation is that tens of tonnes of TNT equivalent (i.e. ~10% of initial AN load) was enough to cause the damages we can see on video, and I can't see what's outraging here. Like if a 20 t explosion is something small.

That's all.

The reason that had caused the explosion will be never found anyway, I guess, as the firestarter probably evaporated.
It could be welding, short current caused by works or not, a cigarette, or whatever else, this doesn't affect the result.

Presence of fireworks and other flammable materials, in my opinion, is probably negligible, as unlikely they were welding in a dense cloud of AN dust, and the explosion was not fuel-air.
(Of course, some amount of AN dust in air could cause the fire which detonated the bags, but there could not be tonnes of dust in air, so the main explosion is not fuel-air.)
Also fireworks include their own oxidizer, and unlikely presence of AN could affect their burning much.

ANFO version looks unlikely, as that was just agricultural AN, as far as it's known. Nothing known requires presence of other substances.

So, I would suggest not to invent conspiracy theories, arbitrarily adding new entities to the known picture without new data, and to face the fact that it's no need to measure any explosion in kilotons.

Edited August 7, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

So, I would suggest not to invent conspiracy theories, arbitrarily adding new entities to the known picture without new data, and to face the fact that it's no need to measure any explosion in kilotons.

But the blast clearly was kilotons in energy. People whose jobs it is to figure this stuff out have done the math based on the after photos and arrived at similar conclusions as the people who did the math based on the initial amount of AN stored in the warehouse. Of course their numbers are estimates, but they are much closer to each other than your suggestion that the blast was 1 to 2 orders of magnitude smaller than officially reported. What would be the purpose of exaggerating the size of the blast? This isn't a military test where deterrence may be a psychological factor in deploying a weapon.