New analysis puts more accurate figure on size of last year’s Beirut blast

New light has been shed on the size of the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon in August 2020 that killed more than 200 people and injured thousands more. Estimate of the explosive yield of the blast, which resulted from the detonation of thousands of tonnes of improperly stored ammonium nitrate and damaged more than half the city, have varied widely. In some cases, these figures were inconsistent with what would be expected based on the amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Beirut harbour, as well as the crater size, seismic magnitude and mushroom cloud height, according to researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California.