Sub-kiloton blasts in Donetsk

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Mushroom clouds from two blasts in Donetsk on October 20, 2014
Graph showing the height of the mushroom cloud relative to the yield of the explosion. A 1 kilotons blast would result in a cloud 3 km high.

Location

Military Maps gives a location to the explosions southwest of the Donetsk airport.

Blow on the 1st floor, state factory in Kuibyshev district burns and explodes. The third explosion was very powerful, similar to a hit by Tochka-U.

Wikimapia labels the place as Ministry of Defense Chemical Factory. To the northeast is Military unit 3023 that was hit by a Tochka-U ballistic missile on October 8th.

Nuclear waste site

Rebels in Ukraine are working to develop a radioactive dirty bomb with the help of Russian nuclear scientists, according to a Ukrainian security service dossier obtained by The Times.
The report draws on hacked emails between rebels and intercepted radio communications, as well as a field agent’s findings. It claims that Russian specialists have withdrawn radioactive industrial waste from a secure bunker at the Donetsk state chemical plant and moved it to a rebel military base, where it can be combined with explosives to create a devastatingly effective weapon.
  • Putin and the 'dirty nuclear bomb'! - Cibber Trilby, 2 August 2015
  • According to Anatolii Sharii, makes as much sense as inviting engineers from Mercedes to make a bicycle from waste garbage. But there is a nuclear waste disposal site close to an ammunition and mining explosives factory in Donetsk regularly shelled by Ukraine by half-ton Tochka U munitions. DPR asked OSCE to inspect for environmental dangers due to shelling. In the end, attempts of Ukraine to render Donetsk not inhabitable is presented by Ukrainian press as dirty bomb attempt by rebels.
  • Basurin: another lie from Kiev. 'Such silo in Donetsk really exists, but what is there, no one knows exactly. No one, naturally, opened it. "
  • Why did the Times publish an article about a Novorossia dirty bomb? - Oleg Tsarev, August 3rd, 2015

Sources

“There was a direct hit at the No 47 industrial explosives shop, where some explosives were present. It detonated and caused another explosion. Luckily it didn’t hit the main storage facility where we have some 2.5 tons of explosives,” said Ivan Prikhod’ko, deputy chair of the local community council.

October 8

October 20

February, 8

A very powerful explosion (videos available) was reported in Donetsk on 8 February. Later it was said that a chemical plant in Donetsk was hit by Tochka U missile (fragments shown by Basurin). Preliminary information is that nobody was killed in that explosion. Investigators were on the scene next morning, but the area was further shelled by Ukraine; thus fragments were found and shown next morning. The plant traditionally produced explosives for mining and defense, and utilized old munitions, according to old Ukrainian sources. DPR sources say that the plant is currently producing paints and dry mixes.

June 2015

The radiation background level could have grown in Donetsk due to the powerful explosion in the State Factory of Chemical Products, because a nuclear waste depository is situated there, claimed executive director of the state enterprise East Ukrainian Ecological University Dmitriy Averin according to OstrovV website.
“It is not reliably known what exactly happened there (at the chemical works in Donetsk. – ed.). This is the third explosion occurring in its territory. It is there that one of the nuclear waste depositories of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is situated”, – the expert remarked, having added that there is a chance of destruction of this depository.
Averin also said that no one is monitoring the environment in the “occupied territories”, as he put it, that is why people might know nothing about the contamination.
Fortunately, he is mistaken, but he could have unintentionally revealed the purpose of Ukrainian Army repeated attempts to turn the area of the chemical plant in Donetsk into a replica of the Moon surface.

Aug 5, 2015

Powerful explosion at Donetsk chemical plant, again! Said to be either powerful shell or sabotage, at this point.

Tochka U/Warheads

  • 9Н123Ф — ("fougasse-shrapnel"- fragmentation) Weight 482 kg warhead, explosive mass TG-20 - 162.5 kg, the number of fragments - 14.5 thousand. Impact area - 2-3 hectares. Used in 9М79Ф (9М79-1Ф) missile.
  • 9Н123К — cassette warhead, used in missiles 9M79K (9M79-1K). Contains 50 fragmentation submunitions 9N24 (weighing 7.45 kg, the mass of the explosive type A-IX-20 - 1.45 kg, 316 fragments). Weight 482 kg warhead, the number of fragments - 15.8 thousand. Area of destruction - 3.5-7 hectar wikipedia (Russian)

Video

Beirut 2020

Moved to Beirut 2020 explosion
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