30 Tons of Ammonium Nitrate Missing-Somewhere Between Wyoming and California

This happened around April 12 and is just now coming out.

Some 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and a component in explosives, went missing as it was shipped by rail from Wyoming to California last month, prompting four separate investigations.

A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.

The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state Office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.

One would think something of this magnitude would require immediate reporting!

Ammonium nitrate is commonly used as fertilizer. It’s also an ingredient in high explosives..
“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” the company said through a spokesperson.

I guess we can always hope that's the case, but with reports of jihadists and roughly 400,000 young Chinese men border jumping you'd think there'd be a search party working overtime to verify their 'assumption'. The last thing we need is another 9/11 event.

[www.kqed.org...]

So the theory is that 30 tons leaked out in between, Wyoming and the Mojave Desert, I know it is a long way but one would think if that was the case, there would be more traces of it still on the tracks.

In other words, Pete, get people out there and confirm what happened it's been over a damn month.

a reply to: putnam6

but..couldnt that be confirmed by just checking the railcar?
something is off here, this story was spun before its release

originally posted by: datguy
a reply to: putnam6

but..couldnt that be confirmed by just checking the railcar?
something is off here, this story was spun before its release

I suppose circumstantially it could if the release was open, with the seals still unbroken. But to be certain Id rather know there were 30 tons of ammonium nitrate still spread on the tracks. Hell that needs to be recovered anyway, doesn't it? for a number os reasons. Regardless it had multiple stops one would assume there is a log for all the stops, one would assume if there were a leak at one or some of those stops there would be a pile of ammonium nitrate on the track, not easy to find probably but not impossible either. Find it recover what you can and Id feel better, wouldn't you?

www.nfpa.org...

How and When Ammonium Nitrate Turns Dangerous
Although it is not technically classified as an explosive or
flammable material, under certain conditions, ammonium
nitrate can present a significant explosive threat because it is
an oxidizer — an oxygen-rich compound that can accelerate
fires or explosions. Ammonium nitrate, however, needs another
element to destabilize it for such a reaction to begin.
Exposure to elements such as fire or heat can start the process
of destabilizing ammonium nitrate, making it self-reactive and
prone to releasing flammable and ignitable gases.
Code enforcers, business owners, and facility managers can
help protect buildings before an incident occurs or before it
becomes an enforcement issue by knowing what can make
ammonium nitrate dangerous.
Dangerous Conditions
Ammonium nitrate becomes dangerous if subjected to conditions such as:
• Fire
• Heating in a confined space
• Localized heating potentially leading to the development of
high-temperature areas (such as confined areas in which a
small amount of a larger store of ammonium nitrate is heated)
• Exposure to strong shock waves
• Contamination by combustible materials or incompatible
inorganic substances (such as paint and finely divided metals)
and organic substances (such as wood chips, charcoal, baled
rags, baled scrap paper, burlap or cotton bags, straw, and
sawdust) that can result in sensitivity to explosion
• Low pH or acidic conditions

Highly Dangerous Conditions
The likelihood of an explosion increases if ammonium nitrate is
subject to conditions such as:
• If ammonium nitrate has been changed to liquid form by
heat, becomes molten, and accumulates in large pools
• If there is potential for the confinement of molten ammonium nitrate, such as in drains, pits, sumps, sewers, or dead
spaces in equipment
• If there is potential for a physical shock to the molten ammonium nitrate, such as high-velocity projectiles generated in a
fire
• • If ammonium nitrate is or becomes contaminated before or
during a fire

originally posted by: putnam6

Hell that needs to be recovered anyway, doesn't it? for a number os reasons

Long gone if it's been out there for over a month; if it got spread along the journey it's long since been rain-washed or wind-blown away. Probably are some piles of it in places where the train stopped, but even those are going to be rock or mush by now.

The railroad will definitely "have some splainin' to do" with both investigators and the customer, but the good news is you just don't sneak off with 30 tons of bulk anything. Someone would have noticed.

a reply to: nugget1

with the cost of that stuff now due to shortage it's to valuable to be used to make a bomb, just look for the farmer/ farmers with the greenest fields and you'll find the culprits.

dated Apr 25, 2023 Updated Apr 27, 2023

Although the Ukraine Russia War and the consequent reduction in fertilizer exports from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, as well as the price of natural gas, are major factors in the global fertilizer shortage, other critical events are also shaping the market. This includes the Chinese government’s decision to limit its own fertilizer exports by 50% in 2022 since China provides 30% of global phosphate fertilizer supplies. The increased cost of coal and other commodities also contributed to fertilizer price increases. It also includes things out of human control, such as weather conditions.
Dealing with the global fertilizer shortage

originally posted by: gb540

originally posted by: putnam6

Hell that needs to be recovered anyway, doesn't it? for a number os reasons

Long gone if it's been out there for over a month; if it got spread along the journey it's long since been rain-washed or wind-blown away. Probably are some piles of it in places where the train stopped, but even those are going to be rock or mush by now.

The railroad will definitely "have some splainin' to do" with both investigators and the customer, but the good news is you just don't sneak off with 30 tons of bulk anything. Someone would have noticed.

It depends on where the leak started and finished LOL 30 tons is 30 tons, if it jiggled lose in the Mojave Desert region rain isn't going the be an issue, for that matter it would be easy enough to check the route, and the weather conditions.

FWIW an ex's brother lived next to railroad tracks in Virginia and 4 tons of dirt and gravel got spilled on the track and in his back yard 5 years later it was easy enough to find. Even on the tracks, you could see easily see the places it spilled vs the places it didn't

originally posted by: nugget1
This happened around April 12 and is just now coming out.

Some 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and a component in explosives, went missing as it was shipped by rail from Wyoming to California last month, prompting four separate investigations.

A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.

The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state Office of Emergency Services last Wednesday.

One would think something of this magnitude would require immediate reporting!

Ammonium nitrate is commonly used as fertilizer. It’s also an ingredient in high explosives..
“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” the company said through a spokesperson.

I guess we can always hope that's the case, but with reports of jihadists and roughly 400,000 young Chinese men border jumping you'd think there'd be a search party working overtime to verify their 'assumption'. The last thing we need is another 9/11 event.

[www.kqed.org...]

Potentially a massive risk if someone (hey FBI/NSA) can identify a sufficient amount of fuel oil also missing.

Also potentially just theft for fertilizer.

Also ANFO is shockingly available in its constituent parts in the US, though I’m not going to explain how or why.

So, there are 10s of thousands of people (maybe hundreds of thousands) in jobs that could easily acquire 30 tons of AN and sufficient FO if they have ill intent — the primary guardrail is the NSA and financial agencies will report purchases to DHS and you will get pinged if you aren’t just fertilizing and running a farm.

Similar story: One of the video games I produced had a collectors edition that included a gas mask. We ordered 30,000 gas masks from a wholesaler to Orange County.

I got a call within 18 hours from DHS asking why I ordered 30,000 gas masks. I explained we’re a game company it’s part of the collectors edition, here’s my name and social and my DoS and etc BG checks and the name of Co and our location, come by if you want, but it’s just a funny quirk in the system.

They didn’t come by. They just verified with the owner of the game co that I was an executive producer at the game co.

I worked for a recycling company that shipped in rail cars to some customers.

A rail car is roughly three bulk carrier trailers for truck transport. It would take several hours to empty and it takes special vacume transfer equipment on the trailers or the trucks or a fixed transfer location at a railyard.

It would be easy to track where the train stopped long enough to do that if it was unloaded and not just lost by leaking. The transfer system is very loud in any case and would be noticed at a stopped train along with the trailers and trucks.

I think it would be possible with three systems unloading at the same time to empty it in three to four hours. It would take possibly twelve hours with one transfer system.

originally posted by: beyondknowledge2
I worked for a recycling company that shipped in rail cars to some customers.

A rail car is roughly three bulk carrier trailers for truck transport. It would take several hours to empty and it takes special vacume transfer equipment on the trailers or the trucks or a fixed transfer location at a railyard.

It would be easy to track where the train stopped long enough to do that if it was unloaded and not just lost by leaking. The transfer system is very loud in any case and would be noticed at a stopped train along with the trailers and trucks.

I think it would be possible with three systems unloading at the same time to empty it in three to four hours. It would take possibly twelve hours with one transfer system.

This particular rail route is commercial freight / industrial / mil only yes? No derailed or broken Amtrak train to slow down the primary.

So, if it stopped for any significant period of time, DOT knows where it stopped and for how long and why (and have multiple angles of footage and even SAT footage at that time interval).

Identifying this event’s particulars should in no way be a mystery in any regard.

According to the article:

“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” the company said through a spokesperson.

A Federal Railroad Administration representative, though, says the investigation points to one of the hopper car gates not being properly closed.

Dyno Nobel says the trip lasted two weeks and included multiple stops. The company says it had “limited control” over the railcar as Union Pacific moved it through the country. It says the railcar is being transported back to Wyoming for inspection. And it says it hopes to understand how the shipment was lost and will work to prevent something similar happening again.

The Federal Railroad Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission, Union Pacific and Dyno Nobel are investigating the incident, according to their representatives."

It looks like another can got kicked down the road.....

"Congress passed a law in 2007 to regulate the sale and transfer of ammonium nitrate to prevent its use in acts of terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security issued proposed regulations in 2011 (PDF) but stopped short of formally adopting them."


It was before fertilizer ingredients were listed as in 'short supply' that Biden issued an EO severely limiting the amount of fertilizer ingredients that could be shipped by rail. I thought that was dumb, considering farmers having low crop yields due to our prolonged drought out west.
As farmers go bankrupt, Gates is sweeping in and buying up their land in what some say looks like a controlled demolition.

2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate Will do this....


(The video is rather informative and short)
Not sure what 30 tons would do...

But it would make a big hole I am sure.

a reply to: Darkblade71
Given the size of that is missing it wouldn't be used in 1 bomb

OKC was a moving truck so about 26 feet or so long that was 5000 lbs + everything else needed to make it work where talking over 100x that no way your parking that in downtown anywhere

Domestic terrorists would have no use for this if it was stolen I'd look to Russia or China more so than any one else

originally posted by: markovian
a reply to: Darkblade71
Given the size of that is missing it wouldn't be used in 1 bomb

OKC was a moving truck so about 26 feet or so long that was 5000 lbs + everything else needed to make it work where talking over 100x that no way your parking that in downtown anywhere

Domestic terrorists would have no use for this if it was stolen I'd look to Russia or China more so than any one else

Agreed. And also despite Fed protestations to the contrary, non-trivial amounts of AN and FO is readily obtainable in many industries without any real oversight — it’s a big gap in counter terrorism.

Mainly because Federal regs don’t understand nor capture smaller individual units of AN and FO that are shipped LTL to contractors or individuals for regular work.

Not recommending it but, you could just loot a Home Depot and have more ANFO than McVeigh and more mustard gas than a WW1 battalion (and ten other explosive or chemical weapons).

Major gap in counter terrorism.

what do people expect when the agency responsible for rail safety has no enforcement teeth due to weak regulations?

a reply to: JohnTitorSociety

Not where you live, but up here you can't get ammonium nitrate at a home depot, you have you have a special license just to order the stuff.

a reply to: markovian

Taking into account the volume of trucks on the roads, 100 seems fairly easy to "hide".

So, what I would be more worried about is; infrastructures. That would be more devastating than blowing it downtown.

Let's pray it has simply spilled.

Or that it was clever farmers who got some on the side, because the alternative of war on american soil... no one is ready for that. No one ever is.

originally posted by: lordcomac
a reply to: JohnTitorSociety

Not where you live, but up here you can't get ammonium nitrate at a home depot, you have you have a special license just to order the stuff.

Sure — it varies by country — my main point is that transactional monitoring via banks is the first line of defense against foreign nationals building home brew bombs, of ANFO or anything else — but in the US, this is heavily reliant on reporting and the systems do not accurately capture and report large scale theft.

30 tons of missing AN, is not particularly significant in the US because many many many people can acquire 30 tons of AN via legal or illegal means — what would raise it to the level of “escalate and pay close attention” would be a pattern of acquiring fuel oil (which is more highly tracked than ammonium nitrate for various reasons).

If DHS wants to decipher if this is a risk, the move is to pull all fuel oil purchases and thefts above a trivial scale in geographic areas that are congruent or at least close to the apparent missing AN.

The government has unfettered ability to do this (despite these products being lightly regulated at small scale in the US).

If the NSA can’t identify a pattern of fuel oil purchases in CONUS that corresponds to 30 tons of AN, the NSA should not exist and neither should DHS and neither should the FBI.

I could take $100K and hire some ex-LEO and mil guys and track this question and come up with a definitive answer in 10 days.

So, why say this? Well it bears on competence.

I do not have law enforcement authority currently. I don’t have subpoena power. But give me the right 7 guys for 10 days and compensate them, and the mystery of the AN and the risk of whether FO was purchased in bulk or incrementally to scale, in a pattern that is consistent with the AN loss, this would be a trivial task in the greatest sense of the word trivial.

So, if something does happen that is negative, take a long hard look at the people you think are protecting you or watching this, because they were, at best completely asleep at the wheel.

A couple of thoughts on this,
1. 30 tons of pellets would fit in one average size agricultural hopper trailer commonly used to transport grain by truck

2. Most train cars are designed to haul 80 to 100 tons, and have 2 to 3 separate hoppers unloaded through individual gates. So if the entire car was empty, it would have to come from several gates. As it was, the car was severely underloaded which is not cost effective. It would have been cheaper to move this small amount by truck instead. And way faster.

originally posted by: caterpillage
A couple of thoughts on this,
1. 30 tons of pellets would fit in one average size agricultural hopper trailer commonly used to transport grain by truck

2. Most train cars are designed to haul 80 to 100 tons, and have 2 to 3 separate hoppers unloaded through individual gates. So if the entire car was empty, it would have to come from several gates. As it was, the car was severely underloaded which is not cost effective. It would have been cheaper to move this small amount by truck instead. And way faster.

Generally true but LTL freight is subject to higher regulatory burdens for security tracked products/precursors.

And full fright OTR is not the default for transporting AN, it happens but probably 96% is transported by rail to near end point.

Putting AN with a bill of lading in a truck is a great way to get clocked and stopped. Which even totally innocent costs money.

Putting it on rail, puts it on radar with DOT, DHS, etc. and bulk shipments can be verified and cost effective.

Also 30 tons is not a normal weight — maybe a small or supplemental delivery — normally it would be a lot more on rail or a lot less on a truck.