Claims online assert that the explosion in Beirut was caused by a nuclear explosion.
Within mere minutes of a massive explosion in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, conspiracy theorists were attributing a nuclear explosion as the cause.
As with many conspiracies and unfounded claims, this is thanks largely to social media, and to the speed in which several videos that show the horrifying explosion travelled around the Internet.
However, while the explosion was certainly both enormous and tragic, experts have near unanimously agreed that there are clear indicators that the explosion was not nuclear. We detail many of their responses below.
Vipin Nrang is an MIT professor with a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering who authored the book Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era. He responded to a [now-deleted] tweet from a former ESPN reporter claiming the explosion was a nuke –
I study nuclear weapons. It is not.
Martin Pfeiffer, a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico and who researches nuclear weapons pointed out on Twitter that the explosion lacked two hallmarks of a nuclear blast – a blinding white light and any demonstration of extreme heat, which would have caused far more fires and human casualties on the peripheral of the explosion.
The Wilson Cloud-like effect is result of blast wave compressing & rarifying air w/attendant effects on humidity. A nuke, amongst other things: -blinding white flash -heat of a nuclear detonation FAR exceeds chemical & cloud rises more rapidly
Jeffrey Lewis, an American expert in nuclear non-proliferation and Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project stated publicly that there is none of the phenomena present that one would see with a nuclear explosion.
There is a fire and a secondary explosion. There are literally none of the phenomena one sees with a nuclear explosion.
Much of the confusion surrounding the blast in Beirut seems to hang on some popular misconceptions about nuclear explosions. For example, such misconceptions assume that the iconic “mushroom cloud” can only occur after a nuclear explosion, but this is false. David Dearborn, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wrote in 1999 to Scientific American –
Contrary to a common misconception, the shape of the mushroom cloud does not depend on the nuclear or thermonuclear component; as you note, a massive detonation of chemical explosives would produce the same effect.
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Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weaponry and Professor at Steven Institute of Technology, also noted this misconception while also pointing out that the colour of the explosion – a deep orange – was the wrong color for a nuclear explosions, simply because nuclear explosions are far hotter.
This is just clearly wrong. Mushroom clouds form in all explosions — they just stick around a lot longer for big ones. You can tell from the color of the explosion (deep red/orange) that it is not hot enough to be nuclear (which always starts white/yellow, even small nukes).
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told website Task & Purpose that the explosion was more likely gas or chemical in nature. Kristensen, like Pfeiffer, noting the lack of any bright radiation flash, a hallmark of a nuclear explosion.
First, a nuclear explosion would be a lot more powerful and the cameraman would be gone…
Besides, I don’t see any bright radiation flash that you would get from a nuclear event. Having said that, it looks like a very powerful chemical or gas explosion.
Of course all of this is not to mention that one other inevitable consequence of nuclear explosions is the high radiation levels that would inevitably follow, something that would be near impossible to simply cover up.
The cause of the fire and subsequent explosion is still being investigated, with one of the most likely explanations being a fire starting at a fireworks factory that later spread to a warehouse containing a high amount of Ammonium Nitrate, resulting in the large explosion. Such an accident would certainly not be unprecedented, and this is how the Texas City Disaster of 1947 was caused, when a ship docked in the Port of Texas City caught fire and detonated her load of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, causing a series of fires nearby and causing the deaths of at least 581 people.