This is what Prof. Ehud Keinan, president of the Israeli Chemistry Association, and the person who pushed for the closure of the ammonia tank in Haifa Bay in 2017 following the explosion of 2,750 kg of ammonium nitrate in the Port of Birut on 4/8/20, says in a conversation with the Hidan website.
Yesterday (4/8/20) a massive explosion took place in the port of Birut, which caused a huge explosion and up to the time of writing this news over a hundred dead and hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes or it became uninhabitable. The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Hassan Diab, said that the explosion was caused by a stockpile of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate (ammonium nitrate) that had been stored in the port of Beirut for about six years without observing safety rules. This is how Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion, the president of the Israeli Chemistry Association and the one who pushed for the closure of the ammonia tank in Haifa Bay in August 2017, explains in a conversation with the science website.
What was recorded was the second explosion after the first explosion which allowed many people to record pic.twitter.com/e4rFl9WNcN
- roi kais • רועי קייס (@ kaisos1987) August 4
However, according to Prof. Keenan, what happened in Beirut is not even a precursor to what could have happened in Haifa if a shell had fallen on the ammonia facility or, worse, on the ship filling it. In the case of a clean ammonia leak, hundreds of thousands of people could have died who were pecked in the path of the ammonia cloud, but we did not witness these sights of explosions and a pyrotechnic show that even included an atomic mushroom-like mushroom. Pure ammonia is a silent killer.
Prof. Keenan mentions in this context one of the major disasters caused by the explosion of ammonium nitrate storages - the Texas City disaster occurred on April 16, 1947, when a ship carrying 2,100 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded in the port of Texas City in the state of Texas in the United States. As a result of the explosion and other explosions and fires that it caused, at least 581 people died and heavy damage was caused to the port and its surroundings, including a fire to the foundation of a refinery and a petrochemical complex that operated near the port, and even two planes fell out of the air due to the blast wave. It is the worst explosion disaster in United States history and one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. The impact also created a tsunami of boiling water 4.5 meters high, where red-orange smoke was also reported. Later a similar disaster occurred in a small town in Texas where a factory where 500 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored was set on fire. Dozens of people died there too and hundreds of houses were destroyed.
"The explosion in the capital was unusual compared to the other two events, and I think it must be investigated. I hope the French will do this - in the explosions in Texas there was at least an hour gap between the initial fire and the ammonium nitrate explosion. And that is why there were many firefighters and policemen at the scene who came to put out the initial fire and when the second act of the explosion itself began, they simply evaporated. It usually takes an hour from the time the fire progresses until it reaches and heats the ammonium nitrate at the problematic temperature and explodes. One minute has passed in the capital."
What's the explanation?
"I spoke with a colleague - an expert on explosives in Sweden. The conclusion of both of us is the same, that in the beer mess, we probably stored additional materials, fireworks or something else in the same place, maybe even in the same warehouse. That additional substance was used as an accelerant (an explosive charge has three components: the explosive, the accelerant and the main charge), sped up the process and caused the gap between the two events to shorten to a minute."
"There are three components that cause a disaster - any disaster. One component is technological negligence, stupidity, ignorance. The second factor is the absence of a regulator - a weak, non-working, biased regulator, and the third factor - governmental corruption. When there are all three factors, it's a recipe for disaster and that's what happened there. We stored material that no one understood what its destructive potential was in the heart of an area with intense activity of cargo, goods, people and houses. In all this mess they store six years from 2014, the sacks are sitting there waiting for the moment there will be a fire. This is insane negligence. We know the absence of a regulator in Lebanon, and that governmental corruption is listed in their name as a taboo. When all these ingredients are present, disaster strikes.
Who guarantees that such a disaster will not occur in Haifa Bay?
A disaster of ammonium nitrate will not occur in Haifa Bay. First of all, no one will store such quantities anywhere in the country, for a simple economic reason. It is a commodity and no one stores goods in such quantities and 'sits' on them, but sells them to agriculture. In my opinion, there are a lot of partial stockpiles with fertilizer suppliers who distribute to farmers in small quantities. A second reason to relax is that the ammonium nitrate produced by Fertilizers and Haifa Chemicals is in a wet state or even in the form of a solution. The popular form of fertilizing fields today is through the irrigation system, so farmers buy the concentrated solution in containers, which is not dangerous.
"And the third factor: I simply trust the chemists and engineers in the chemical industry. We have a good professional level, there is no technological negligence, crazy like in the capitals, the engineers and chemists know what they are doing, they work in agriculture and everything is fine, so even though there is no regulator and there is governmental corruption, we have good professionals and if there are good professionals and managers, everything will be fine."
In particular, this is true after emptying all the ammonia, which Prof. Keenan was one of the main pushers for - "a disaster could have occurred. As mentioned, this may not have been a 'celebration' of fireworks and pyrotechnics, but the disaster could have ended with tens of thousands of deaths. As long as there was any faith we fought and that is why I dedicated a year of my life and we won. I recently finished writing the book "The Ammonia War - An Introductory Lesson for Democracy". The reason is that everything we experienced in the ammonia story in terms of the factors I'm talking about was a precursor to the government's treatment in other areas such as the corona epidemic. The corona has become a disaster because three things exist: technological ignorance and negligence, lack of regulation and governmental corruption. It was before but on a completely different scale.”
More of the topic in Hayadan:
Fixing the world's nitrogen problem
Water is used as a catalyst in detonating explosives
The environmental disaster that will shake the Middle East?
9 תגובות
333 - "To compare the corruption in Lebanon to what is happening here - a wild exaggeration" - does not need an explosion. Every year thousands of people die from pollution. People in Kiryat Haim are dying of cancer because of oil tanks from XNUMX that are not evacuated. The sea of Acre is polluted with money that has not been evacuated and you say there is no governmental corruption? The ammonia tank was also evacuated because of the involvement of citizens and not because of the involvement of the government.
"So even though there is no regulator and there is governmental corruption, we have good professionals"
Come on, compare the corruption in Lebanon to what is happening here - a wild exaggeration
It sounds like if the politicians in Israel had the opportunity to approve the storage of dangerous materials in this dangerous way - they would do it - is that really what you think?
If it was indeed so, it would have permeated the professional layer a long time ago, as in any country where there is governmental corruption.
I didn't suspend a country that is corrupt in government, that it doesn't inform the professional life in it. (The level of medicine, personal security, etc.) but simply the situation is not as extreme as you describe.
You are mixing political and emotional personal opinions in a study that should be free of all these
Well, this is a material that was subject to legal proceedings, and although they tried to draw the attention of the judges to the danger of the material and the necessity to remove it, nothing was done about it. It is actually very suitable for lazy bureaucracies of this kind.
If it depended only on Hezbollah, one must assume that the material would have been swallowed up in the thicket of their tunnels in southern Lebanon and would have seen the light of day again only on the day of the launch south.
Despite this, it is possible to assume that Hezbollah tried to stick sticks in the wheels and steer the material in its direction, instead of selling it to farmers, or taking it out of the country, and it is possible that this is one of the reasons for the continuation of the processes.
In the end, for all the corruption in Posha in Lebanon, there is no chance that they have not cleaned all the archives of any memory of what really happened and who stirred the cauldron, before it exploded.
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The explosion - negligence. Ammonium nitrate storage - no.
No one would store for many years another fertilizer, say poultry manure or phosphates of any kind, if the cost of their storage far exceeds the value of the fertilizer.
They kept the ammonium nitrate precisely because it is a fertilizer that can also be used as an explosive, and it doesn't matter how exactly the fertilizer got to the warehouse, even though Hezbollah's long affair with this substance is suspicious to the point of incrimination. Nasrallah's rolling of the eyes from yesterday as if he barely knows the material and the port of Beirut may fool Macron and Obama, but not our intelligence or even the demonstrators in Beirut. They know very well that most of the jobs in the port are held by Hizbullah people (according to Zvi Yezkali).
This is of course just my assessment. In two months I believe this will be the general opinion.
Israel
I didn't understand you, you say that Hizbullah farmed for us, but this is not negligence...
So what, they deliberately blew themselves up?
It is not clear from your words.
In any case, it looks like negligence, which for some players in the geopolitical world comes at a great time and for others it comes at a bad time.
From here on, this whole thing starts to get mixed up - the conspiracy..
I am a very small fan of conspiracies, but I find it very difficult to accept the explanation of negligence. The reason actually appears in the article - "It is a commodity and no one stores goods in such quantities and 'sits' on them, but sells them to agriculture."
It is hard for me to accept that shrewd beer merchants will pay for many years for the storage of any goods and more in a port where storage is even more expensive. The government is not Shlomial to that extent either. I believe that an investigation will reveal the elephant in the middle of the room, which is ammonium nitrate, Hezbollah's favorite substance that they have already tried to use several times in Europe, aggro Hezbollah for us.
I also believe that if something similar were to happen here, the parliament building in the capitals would not be lit up with the Israeli flag. Candy, on the other hand, will often be distributed and rice, and fireworks will also light up the beers.
Regarding ammonium nitrate in the port of Birut - for sure - we also know its origin - in a Russian ship that was abandoned a few years ago, and no one demanded the goods. They just had to sell the fertilizer to the farmers.
If there was an explosive there, it only accelerated the process, any fire would cause the same effect.
Hmmmmm.... It's interesting "additional materials will probably be fireworks" how much arrogance how hypocritical and how much of a crappy PC whose motivation is only to say "you see I saved you from a similar fate" and self glorification. No ammonia, no shoes, just a huge ammunition depot and nothing else in our neighborhood. When I was a little boy, they used to say:
"Don't shit on my eyes in the middle of the day and tell me I can't see because it's midnight"
Given the three components the professor named: "technological negligence, the lack of a regulator and governmental corruption (and they all took place in Beirut)", I don't exactly understand how you can expect them to come to the truth about what happened there, even if the French are involved. And also in the situation that resulted that some of the documentation and those involved simply evaporated from the area (physically or figuratively).