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How big of an explosion would this create.

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DCal430

Diamond Member
The Texas explosion made me wonder about the safety of two popane tanks near me.

If two 50 Million Lbs of liquid propane storage tanks exploded, how big would the explosion be. I live 3 miles from this, is that far enough to escape harm if it they go boom.

I calculated this

50,000,000 (lbs)*(21,500 BTU/lb)*(1 Ton TNT/3,965,666 BTU) = 271 Kilo Tons of TNT energy equivalent, for each of the two tanks. How big of a boom is this.
 
Dunno. I have a better question though. How small can you make a nuclear bomb? I'm thinking there's a minimal amount of material needed to get things started, but I don't know. Could you make something that would only blowup a house? How about firecracker size? If so, how much would it weigh, and what dimensions would it be?
 
The shockwave will hit you, the fireball won't.
strength of shockwave will depend on what's between you and the propane, as well as various other factors like distance between tanks, timing of detonation, etc
 
DCal430 said:
The Texas explosion made me wonder about the safety of two popane tanks near me.

If two 50 Million Lbs of liquid propane storage tanks exploded, how big would the explosion be. I live 3 miles from this, is that far enough to escape harm if it they go boom.

I calculated this

50,000,000 (lbs)*(21,500 BTU/lb)*(1 Ton TNT/3,965,666 BTU) = 271 Kilo Tons of TNT energy equivalent, for each of the two tanks. How big of a boom is this.
Click to expand...

Your body would be driven through the opposite wall of your house like squeeze Parkay.
 
Liquid propane is very safe. It's safer than natural gas. If there were an explosion, most of the potential fuel would be dispersed by a relatively small explosion. At 3 miles, you might get a cracked window or two. I had a 5 story grain silo blow up right next to a liquid propane depot and it did not explode. I was 4 blocks away and didn't break any windows.
 
lxskllr said:
Dunno. I have a better question though. How small can you make a nuclear bomb? I'm thinking there's a minimal amount of material needed to get things started, but I don't know. Could you make something that would only blowup a house? How about firecracker size? If so, how much would it weigh, and what dimensions would it be?
Click to expand...

Found this.
 
From what I can tell a 271 kiloton nuclear air blast radius is just under 3 miles, the thermal blast radius (3rd degree burns on exposed skin) would be ~4 and a 1/4 miles.
 
Most of the explosion would probably be directed upward.

You'll definitely feel the boom and maybe get knocked on your ass, nothing serious at 3 miles. Biggest danger might be flying glass but at 3 miles you'd need direct line of sight.

This is fuel that will explode due to pressurization/atomoization only, it's not a high explosive. The effects won't be anywhere near the equivalent energy in TNT let alone a nuclear bomb. The energy is consumed/distributed in an entirely different manner. Most of it will burn subsonically in a sky high fireball over a period of time rather than explode/detonate and using all the energy at once.
 
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exdeath said:
Most of the explosion would probably be directed upward.

You'll definitely feel the boom and maybe get knocked on your ass, nothing serious.

This is fuel that will explode only due to pressurization/atomoization only, it's not a high explosive. The effects won't be anywhere near the equivalent energy in TNT let alone a nuclear bomb. Most of it will burn subsonically in a sky high fireball rather than detonate.
Click to expand...

Yup, op you have nothing to worry about.
 
lxskllr said:
Dunno. I have a better question though. How small can you make a nuclear bomb? I'm thinking there's a minimal amount of material needed to get things started, but I don't know. Could you make something that would only blowup a house? How about firecracker size? If so, how much would it weigh, and what dimensions would it be?
Click to expand...

to ensure critical mass you'd have to have a certain chunk of nuclear material, purity and shape are factors and I'd guess you'd need a couple of kilograms to make sure it goes critical and creates an explosion. you'd still be in the 10 ton yield area, so it it would blow up the house and then some 😀
 
lxskllr said:
Dunno. I have a better question though. How small can you make a nuclear bomb? I'm thinking there's a minimal amount of material needed to get things started, but I don't know. Could you make something that would only blowup a house? How about firecracker size? If so, how much would it weigh, and what dimensions would it be?
Click to expand...

Critical mass varies with density.

With current explosives about the smallest amount of nuclear fuel possible to obtain a prompt supercritical mass will produce in the vicinity of 10 ton TNT yield in something the size of a car battery for an implosion device. A gun type device would be larger as the density would be lower than implosion type.

For comparison, the Oklahoma city bombing was just over 2 tons of ANFO. So even 10 ton yield you're still talking a couple city blocks, not just a single house.
 
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Hmmm, I'd be worried about the percussion wave, while the majority of the flames would be directed upward by the ground the percussion wave from that much exploding at once could be devastating..
 
DCal430 said:
The Texas explosion made me wonder about the safety of two popane tanks near me.

If two 50 Million Lbs of liquid propane storage tanks exploded, how big would the explosion be. I live 3 miles from this, is that far enough to escape harm if it they go boom.

I calculated this

50,000,000 (lbs)*(21,500 BTU/lb)*(1 Ton TNT/3,965,666 BTU) = 271 Kilo Tons of TNT energy equivalent, for each of the two tanks. How big of a boom is this.
Click to expand...

Well assuming both detonated at the same time and were full and not 80% capacity, your looking at .23 mile radius fireball, 1.39 mile radius deadly shockwave of over 20psi, and 3.67 mile radius shockwave of over 4.6psi. 20psi will knock over concrete structures and be fatal, at 4.6psi your looking at most buildings collapsing and widespread injury (stolen from nukemap).

However
 
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Well the Murdock explosion was more than 100,000 liters right? So figure that is 110,000lbs of propane

original.gif
 
With proper setup you could create a nuke with 4kg of fissionable material, but you'd likely need neutron reflector and other highly advanced features to help such a small mass to go critical.
 
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