According to the news, the explosion in China was caused by a huge warehouse filled with explosives of various types.

I live 4 blocks from the Golden Gate in San Francisco and there are container ships coming in from the Pacific and headed for the Port Of Oakland. In addition to everything else that's imported into the U.S. from China, I hope the U.S isn't importing explosives too.

 

It's worse than you think. The U.S. actually makes explosives!

 

Up until this one in China, the explosion at the PEPCON rocket fuel plant in Nevada was one of the biggest on record.

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

 

Up until this one in China, the explosion at the PEPCON rocket fuel plant in Nevada was one of the biggest on record.

I guess we will have to have a "bigger" explosion to re-capture the record. Naw. That would lead to an "explosion" race to determine which nation wins the prize for the biggest explosion.

 

Shock and Awe.

I suspect another meteorite.
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/tem...5_ahi_band7&image_width=1020&image_height=720

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/asia/china-tianjin-explosions/

 

Yea.. more pollution floating here from China..

 

Yea.. more pollution floating here from China..

A toxic stew.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/14/us-china-blast-idUSKCN0QH2B220150814

The warehouse, designed to house dangerous and toxic chemicals, was storing mainly ammonium nitrate, potassium nitrate and calcium carbide at the time, according to police. Xinhua has said several containers in the warehouse caught fire before the explosions.
Chemical safety experts said calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene, a highly explosive gas. An explosion could be caused if fire fighters sprayed the calcium carbide with water, they said.
....
Lei Jinde, the deputy propaganda department head of China's fire department, a part of the Ministry of Public Security, told state-backed news website ThePaper.cn that the first group of fire fighters on the scene had used water.

"We knew there was calcium carbide inside but we didn't know whether it had already exploded," he said.

So then you water it down to make sure it explodes.
I wonder who will be the new deputy propaganda department head.

 

Hola Glenn,

If that worries you, then, container terminals might be a more valid concern because they have a storage area, unless they deliver them "hook to truck".

To help you to rest tonight and the forthcoming ones, have you realised that everything coming from overseas comes through the sea? Just to contribute to your peace of mind, please google IMO dangerous goods. I lived with that for 17 years at sea plus these 24 as a surveyor.
As a Ch. Officer, after taking over in an LPG carrier with vessel loaded, after 48 hours I said to myself: I need to sleep so if this thing blows up, I will not even know that.

About 2 or 3 years ago, a major carrier issued a worldwide memo warning that some hundreds of containers having been serviced at a certain place entailed a sure risk of explosion when their refrigerating system was opened for servicing...

Moving inland maybe? Have a good night.

 

Hola Glenn,

If that worries you, then, container terminals might be a more valid concern because they have a storage area, unless they deliver them "hook to truck".

To help you to rest tonight and the forthcoming ones, have you realised that everything coming from overseas comes through the sea? Just to contribute to your peace of mind, please google IMO dangerous goods. I lived with that for 17 years at sea plus these 24 as a surveyor.
As a Ch. Officer, after taking over in an LPG carrier with vessel loaded, after 48 hours I said to myself: I need to sleep so if this thing blows up, I will not even know that.

About 2 or 3 years ago, a major carrier issued a worldwide memo warning that some hundreds of containers having been serviced at a certain place entailed a sure risk of explosion when their refrigerating system was opened for servicing...

Moving inland maybe? Have a good night.

MICHIGAN seems to be a little better now.

 

There is no way only 50 people were killed, the place looks like Hiroshima near the explosion.

 

Wasn't Hiroshima 20 kiloton? I think the first report I heard said this was 21 kiloton. It will probably go up.

 

I will check the reports again.

However I recall the total energy yield of this explosion was equal to just 25 tons of TNT and maybe equal to a micro-nuclear device.

That's 50,000 Lbs. and to visualize this, it's the weight of 2-1/2 city transit buses. The largest bomb using conventional explosives in the U.S. military arsenal is 25,000 Lbs.

 

Wasn't Hiroshima 20 kiloton? I think the first report I heard said this was 21 kiloton. It will probably go up.

The Chinese government reports say 21 tons (thinking that's on the far low side) but I haven't seen reliable seismic data to verify this.

http://quarksandcoffee.com/index.ph...was-the-shockwave-from-the-tianjin-explosion/
We (the military) had a slide-rule and chart to calculate blast-zone damage for tactical nukes using the TNT equivalent so we could be 'safe' from the effects.
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/blast-effect-calculation-1-pdf.2578/

 

I'm wondering why the energy yield of a nuclear explosion is not expressed in Joules, Gigawatt-Hours, or simply "Mass Defect".

If mass defect was used, it could be referenced to the energy equivalent of 1 gram of fissionable/fusible material.

While comparing the energy a nuclear device to the equivalent amount of conventional explosives is good for explosive purposes, it would be more convenient (at least from the viewpoint of physics) to use something related to the actual energy output.

 

I'm wondering why the energy yield of a nuclear explosion is not expressed in Joules, Gigawatt-Hours, or simply "Mass Defect".

12-15 kT was the Hiroshima bomb.


TNT was the choice of reference. Explosive personnel at the time understood that. If they used another scale, how would they get their point across that to protect your ass, you needed to be further away than anything you've seen before.

The first thermonuclear device, "Mike", took out Elugelab Island. You can still see the hole left by Mike and another on google earth .... 11°39'57.56"N 162°11'23.52"E

You can see "Mike" the first multiple megaton explosion, 10.4 megatons ... search for Operation IVY on youtube.

 

I was thinking about a practical numerical expression for use in physics rather than one for military use.

Another brilliant idea of mine goes down in flames -again!!!

 

I was thinking about a practical numerical expression for use in physics rather than one for military use.

Another brilliant idea of mine goes down in flames -again!!!

I'll help. You tell me the conversion factor for kilotons of TNT to grams of mass and I will use your standard of measurement whenever it is needed in the Chat or Projects Forum.

 

Couldn’t we cram 20 kiloton of TNT into a semi trailer? Or equivalent of plastic(bigger bang)?

That’s not that big. We now have transports that can drop semis, don’t we?

How much does a tank weigh? We have steerable chutes now. Course I don’t know the 20 kiloton glide time.

So we could make large clean bombs.

If we set one off on a salt flat, other than the crater, there wouldn’t be that much damage.

And if leveling a small town or military installation is necessary, it wouldn’t leave any radiation.

Surely the military has more than a 10 kiloton conventional weapon.


JJ......maybe your right. It might be 20 kiloton was the second one.

 

I recall that the largest conventional in the U.S. arsenal contains 25,000 Lbs. of potent explosive.

That would fit in a tractor trailer, but the housing might make it a lot larger. However it's made, it's got to be small enough to be carried in a B-52 size bomber.

 

I recall that the largest conventional in the U.S. arsenal contains 25,000 Lbs. of potent explosive.

That would fit in a tractor trailer, but the housing might make it a lot larger. However it's made, it's got to be small enough to be carried in a B-52 size bomber.

Or the back of a cargo plane.

I think the lowest yield for a nuke was 10-tons on a Davy Crockett.

Proton M, I'm guessing this is equivalent to a few tons of TNT

They installed the sensors upside down in the rocket. Stuff happens.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html