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You do have to be very careful if you start piling up ammonium nitrate on an industrial scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters

You do have to be very careful if you start piling up ammonium nitrate on an industrial scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disas... I'm not sure I'd want to stand next to a ball mill grinding up ammonium nitrate, myself.

buildbot 4y ago
Plus the iron powder which I am pretty sure would start burning too...
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  Hmm... maybe. It would depend on what stage of the process. Sounds like it starts with iron oxide, which wouldn't burn per se. But it also sounds like the iron oxide is reduced to iron nanoparticles with dissolved nitrogen in the process. Those would probably burn well, and even if they didn't, you might wind up with a bunch of molten iron, thermite-style. That wouldn't be good, either.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    I would imagine mining rare earths isn't exactly safe either, so it just needs to beat the safety record of that
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
roughly 4y ago
In fairness, the big question about the current sourcing of rare-earth materials is whether it'll cause similar problems at some point. At least in this method the explosions mostly happen at the site of production, as opposed to, say, in the Taiwan Strait.
ortusdux 4y ago
AN is actually quite stable. It clumps when wet, and people back in the day would use dynamite to break mounds of it apart. It takes the addition of fuel to make it slightly unstable, but even then it takes a a high explosive to trigger it. The Beruit explosion was only possible because they stored AN, car tires, and fireworks in one location. And even then, best estimates are that only 5% of the AN combusted.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > And even then, best estimates are that only 5% of the AN combusted. You say that as though it is a good thing. The way I read it is that it could have been much, much worse if the conditions had been a bit different.
  - LeifCarrotson 4y ago
    I think the parent's point is that it was stable enough that ~20x as much AN as exploded in Beruit survived being next to an enormous explosion and didn't itself go off. A convoluted argument, to be sure.
    - indolering 4y ago
      From a chemist's standpoint, pointing out the level of inefficiency is straightforward: it sucks compared to X at blowing stuff up! But from a safety engineering PoV ... robots. More robots.
TylerE 4y ago
The scariest bit to me is that if it detonates, the main product of that is nitrous oxide, which is rather… burny, and is its own source of oxygen.

buildbot 4y ago

Plus the iron powder which I am pretty sure would start burning too...

Turing_Machine 4y ago
Hmm... maybe. It would depend on what stage of the process. Sounds like it starts with iron oxide, which wouldn't burn per se. But it also sounds like the iron oxide is reduced to iron nanoparticles with dissolved nitrogen in the process. Those would probably burn well, and even if they didn't, you might wind up with a bunch of molten iron, thermite-style. That wouldn't be good, either.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  I would imagine mining rare earths isn't exactly safe either, so it just needs to beat the safety record of that

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

roughly 4y ago

In fairness, the big question about the current sourcing of rare-earth materials is whether it'll cause similar problems at some point. At least in this method the explosions mostly happen at the site of production, as opposed to, say, in the Taiwan Strait.

ortusdux 4y ago

AN is actually quite stable. It clumps when wet, and people back in the day would use dynamite to break mounds of it apart. It takes the addition of fuel to make it slightly unstable, but even then it takes a a high explosive to trigger it. The Beruit explosion was only possible because they stored AN, car tires, and fireworks in one location. And even then, best estimates are that only 5% of the AN combusted.

jacquesm 4y ago
> And even then, best estimates are that only 5% of the AN combusted. You say that as though it is a good thing. The way I read it is that it could have been much, much worse if the conditions had been a bit different.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  I think the parent's point is that it was stable enough that ~20x as much AN as exploded in Beruit survived being next to an enormous explosion and didn't itself go off. A convoluted argument, to be sure.
  - indolering 4y ago
    From a chemist's standpoint, pointing out the level of inefficiency is straightforward: it sucks compared to X at blowing stuff up! But from a safety engineering PoV ... robots. More robots.

TylerE 4y ago

The scariest bit to me is that if it detonates, the main product of that is nitrous oxide, which is rather… burny, and is its own source of oxygen.