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British Town Worried About WWII Ammo Ship Wreck
Radical Rad writes "For 60 years, 1.4 kilotons of unstable world war II bombs have lain in the rusting wreck of a US cargo ship half-submerged on a sandbank in the river Thames. If it explodes it will be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud, water, and metal fragments causing devastation to the nearby town of Sheerness in Kent." The BBC has more.
hmmm "The government has been advised that doing nothing isn't really a sensible option any more."
... with something having a continuous risk, no matter how small, the chance of it exploding approaches one over time... it seems like something should have been done immediately... certainly not 60 years later. The only excuse I can think of is the hope that the technology would improve enough to find a safer way to safeguard the town, but surely no one thought this would happen quick enough to be worth the risk... this sounds like a bunch of people not willing to take a risk and just waiting for the next person to take on the responsibility... pah.
She said the last examination, in 2003, showed the site to be no more dangerous than in the past.
Alright, according to the article the bombs could detonate at any point spontaneously, but the risk hasn't changed from the past,
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
According to the linked BBC piece, the wave caused by a potential explosion would not be 3km high, it would be 16ft high. The New Scientist makes mention of a 3000m column of debris: that is material would reach a maximum height of 3km. This is entirely different from a tsunami-like wave baselessly alluded to by the Slashdot blurb.
As a participent/observer, I can attest that (ignoring some misc. issues), it blow'ed up real good! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
By coincidence, I had just read the New Scientist's article about this, which is the source of the BBC article, but in much more depth and with many more details,
Largest ever non-nuclear blast has already occured.
Does that sentence make anyone elses head hurt? Of course it has occured. That may have been a big explosion, but this would then suplant that as being the largest. The thing about being the biggest/largest/tallest/longest etc of something, is that you only keep the title as long as nothing else comes along and surpasses you.
I thought that the explosion along the Siberian pipeline was the largest non-nuclear anyways.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
What happens when explosives are stored improperly (and I can't imagine anything more improper) is the material separates. This leaves the inert material and nitroglycerine. Thats about as unstable as it gets. Nitro is bad news.
That's, of course, only the case for explosives which use nitroglycerine.
As this is WWII ordnance, we're probably not looking at any of those. Could be straight TNT, which is extremely stable, but various alkali compounds of the sort found in seawater can react with it to form a variety of compounds that are unstable to heat and impact. Could be Composition B, which is a mixture of TNT and RDX, so the same thing applies, or Comp A, which is straight RDX and a plasticizer, not so stable as Comp B. Ammonium picrate was used as a bursting charge, and is incredibly stable to shock and friction, but, again, seawater. Could also be Torpex, another popular one, and another RDX/TNT mixture. Problem with all of these is primarily the seawater environment reacting with the TNT to produce unstable products.
Nitrocellulose wasn't used in any of the common WWII high-explosives, nor was nitroglycerin; most high explosives of the day were varying mixtures of TNT, RDX, and sometimes PETN or Tetryl. Nitrocellulose isn't a high explosive at all; it doesn't detonate, it deflagrates, and the propagation of the chemical reaction through the material is below the speed of sound. What it was for, up until and probably throughout WWII, was a propellant, a replacement for gunpowder. It only explodes at all when confined; flash paper is basically straight nitrocellulose, and you can light that stuff off while holding it in your hand.
It's not a holiday for Guy Fawkes. It's a holiday that celebrates his failure and execution; he is (or rather was, I don't know many places that still do this) burned in effigy every year.
Actually it might be a blessing if it did happen.
If you want to know more about the dubious joys of living on the isle of Sheppey (on which Sheerness is located) then you can find out at the most excellent Isle of Sheppey tourists guide.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Actually, Port Chicago has been made a national memorial:
http://www.nps.gov/poch/index.htm
A pretty big deal actually was made of the explosion; there was a full board of inquiry and it did result in some procedural changes to the way ammunition was handled, as well as the reduction, still in 1944, of the number of blacks at ammunition depots reduced to 30% of staff. At Port Chicago, all of the loaders were black, only the officers were white.
Shamefully, the handful loaders who survived were court-martialed for mutiny because they refused to load ammunition until safety changes were made. While they were released from prison in 1946, well short of the long sentences they were given, that doesn't change the wrong that was done to them.
More info on Port Chicago is here:
http://www.usmm.org/portchicago.html
(Sorry to post as AC - I didn't register yet.)
Cluster bombs based on a spring-loaded collection of small bomblets were used for delivering both HE and incendiary charges in WW2.
I live in a dutch town (Nijmegen) that was destroyed by US bombers, partially using cluster-bombs, in August 1944. Over 800 Dutch were killed and zero Germans. The attack was an accident when several aircraft could not find their primary target in the industrialised area of Germany. The resulting fires attracted other 'geographically-embarassed' aircraft....
I'm certainly glad I don't live in Sheerness though !