Jesus, what just happened in Beirut?

I looks so much like a nuke! The first bit looks like ammunition being cooked off then a small nuke. The colour of the smoke, the big white ring, the mushroom. They say that a nuke would have a double flash (not sure that you would see that inside the concrete warehouse)

I imagine the consequences of it being a nuke would be pretty dire. WWIII sort of stuff.

Horrific explosion, the video of the bride caught in the blast was like a sci fi scene. Surreal
 
There is always a blinding white flash with nuclear bombs which this didn't have.
I've seen estimates of 1-3 kilotons as to its size. Hiroshima was 10 kilotons. The largest nuclear explosion was 50 megatons. Modern ICBMs are between 1 to 5 megatons.
There are tactical nuclear weapons that are around the size of the Beirut explosion though.
 
If you look at it like this - 2750 tonnes (metric) is approx 3000 tons (Imperial), Ammonium Nitrate is approx .42 x weight for weight of TNT, so IF (and it's a big big IF) all of the Ammonium Nitrate exploded (likely a proportion of a pile that size would have been blown off before it could explode) you're looking at max 1.2 Kiltotons TNT. Small tactical nuke in other words.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
There is always a blinding white flash with nuclear bombs which this didn't have.
I've seen estimates of 1-3 kilotons as to its size. Hiroshima was 10 kilotons. The largest nuclear explosion was 50 megatons. Modern ICBMs are between 1 to 5 megatons.
There are tactical nuclear weapons that are around the size of the Beirut explosion though.
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The blinding white flash like when bombs are dropped from a plane or set off in a desert. Would it be different being set off in a building? Would the nuke go off differently if it was set off by a fire in a munitions dump? By this I mean would the explosion be less efficient reduced yells and increased amount of strontium produced. Could it have been a crudely assembled nuke (if there is such a thing?)

I don’t want to go all tonight foil hat on this but a firework factory (creating so much red smoke) and ammonium nitrate looking like a nuclear blast sounds just as far fetched as the alternative.
 
Why is an ammonium nitrate explosion far fetched? There have been a number of them.
What would be the point of setting off a tactical nuclear weapon where a large quantity of ammonium nitrate is stored? Why not just ignite the ammonium nitrate? The ammonium nitrate that is documented by multiple sources.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
Why is an ammonium nitrate explosion far fetched? There have been a number of them.
What would be the point of setting off a tactical nuclear weapon where a large quantity of ammonium nitrate is stored? Why not just ignite the ammonium nitrate? The ammonium nitrate that is documented by multiple sources.
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It was the firework factory next to the large quantity of ammonium nitrate that was far fetched.. to the point where a nuclear explosion sounded plausible also. I don’t know what colour ammonium nitrate burns or how much of it would be required to produce such and explosion. Very surreal and uncomfortable to watch.
 
newyddion said:
It was the firework factory next to the large quantity of ammonium nitrate that was far fetched.
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I don't know about far-fetched - it was certainly a disgrace and a sign of a country lacking a robust and effective administration to have allowed the two to be so close together but that's why many of the people in Lebanon are so angry with their government. People had been warning for years about the dangers of this store of ammonium nitrate being where it was, but no action was taken.

Ammonium nitrate sat in Beirut for years despite repeated warnings
 
newyddion said:
It was the firework factory next to the large quantity of ammonium nitrate that was far fetched.. to the point where a nuclear explosion sounded plausible also. I don’t know what colour ammonium nitrate burns or how much of it would be required to produce such and explosion. Very surreal and uncomfortable to watch.
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Most organic dusts will explode if they form a cloud. There are numerous examples of this from flour to other solid chemicals storage. Often, firefighters fighting a fire, can forcefully disperse a powder such that a dust cloud forms and explodes. There's a lot of guidance on avoiding this. Ammonium nitrate is not just an organic powder; with increasing temperature it starts an irreversible decomposition to nitrous oxide but as the temperature rises a self propagating reaction takes place, fully decomposing to its constituent parts and is highly exothermic (an explosion).
 
The blinding flash you get from a nuclear explosion is caused by the temperature it creates. If you want to find out how this works you can get an idea here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation . (pace BoroMart). A nuke isn't in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings but it's good enough for this discussion. The difference in temperatures between chemical and nuclear explosions is immense, they're two completely different things.
 
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