7x Beirut or 1/3 power of Hiroshima according to the article (although would it cause as much damage as a nuke detonated in the air?)

Beirut was 2750 tons. So it's slightly more than 7 times as much. Also, one ton of ammonium nitrate is roughly equivalent to 250kg of TNT. If this shipment actually were to explode all at once, the energy equivalent would be roughly 20x0.25=5 kilotons of TNT. That's one third of the Hiroshima bomb's 15 kilotons.

But these are highly oversimplified number games. For example, it's highly doubtful someone could get this to explode all at once without dispersing most of it - even if they were actively trying to cause maximum damage. Nonetheless it's still a monumental safety risk and any port in their right mind would do well to shoo this piece of crap back to Russia.

No, equal TNT power equivalent can have different effect depending on the nature of the explosive. The heat spreaded from an amonium nitrate blast, like in Beyrut, does not last as long, from [0],

> However even on this basis, comparing the actual energy yields of a large nuclear device and an explosion of TNT can be slightly inaccurate. Small TNT explosions, especially in the open, don't tend to burn the carbon-particle and hydrocarbon products of the explosion. Gas-expansion and pressure-change effects tend to "freeze" the burn rapidly. A large open explosion of TNT may maintain fireball temperatures high enough so that some of those products do burn up with atmospheric oxygen [...]

See also the "Relative effectiveness factor" paragraph [1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effect...

At some point the comparison becomes moot. It's suffice to say that it's big enough to wreck the port, plus some significant percentage of the city around it.

No, it likely wouldn't do as much damage as an airburst nuke. But it would be catastrophic nonetheless.

> At some point the comparison becomes moot.

That's a red herring. No one is looking at the decimal places. The comparison serves to provide a real-world benchmark of the expectable destructive power of the cargo held by this vessel, and a relative comparison of how big it would be. Arguing otherwise is idiotic.

It’s the same mentality of “it’d be really bad if something happened to that nuclear power plant due to an accident” that they approach the Ukraine invasion with the goal genociding their neighbor and taking their land/resources