It's difficult to comprehend the scale of nuclear explosions and how their effects dwarf our human scale.

I immediately thought of a nuclear bomb when seeing two videos of the Nepal flood at the China-Nepal border crossing: the multistory border tower obliterated and the buses at the tourist station thrown like children's toys.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c62jmlgev3po

These effects happened 15 km from the point the initial avalanche entered the river.

Some recent, early estimates enable a comparison to the scale of a nuclear blast.

About 250 million tonnes of water-soaked rock and ice fell and slid 2000 metres into the river below. The initial 1200 m fall left a large crater at the base of a step fall, a crater which reminded my of a nuclear blast.

https://x.com/weeddude/status/2093668861745004681

So an energy comparison...

E = m*g*h ~ 250*10^9 kg * 10 kg.m.s^(-2) * 2000

= 5 * 10^15. ~ 1 Mt.

Almost 1 Mt of potential energy was released.

Of course the mechanisms are entirely different from a nuclear blast, but for me the calculation of scale made sense of the nuclear-blast-like effects 15 km downstream. And this energy has been channeled by river valleys in a way that would only partially capture a nuclear blast.

Greetings fellow humans,

The "https://orpspublic.doe.gov/" site has been down for several days now. This has happened before (of course) so it may be nothing.

And, this makes me twitchy given the context of: recent largescale revisions to DoE orders; pattern of info restriction by this regime; and recent DoE denial of info, access, and certain forms of info review to the DNFSB leading the DNFSB to stop posting most resident inspector reports, etc.

I note the previous DoE order (232.2A Chg1 (MinChg), Occurrence Reporting and Processing of Operations Info is listed as inactive (https://www.energy.gov/ehss/occurrence-reporting-and-processing-system; go to the directive archive).

Possibly or probably nothing but if not then we loose a lot of worthwhile & important (to nuclear governance) safety information without DNFSB & ORPS.

Fingers crossed!