The explosion in the Lebanese capital killed at least 100 people and injured several thousand, also leaving 300,000 without shelter. According to preliminary reports, the tragedy was caused by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, an explosive chemical compound stored in the port.
The deadly blast in the port of Beirut, which the mayor of the city compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, had an explosive yield of several hundred tonnes of TNT equivalent, Business Insider reported, citing weapons experts.
According to Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear and conventional weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, he estimated the yield to be between 200 and 500 tonnes, "looking at blast damage, the shockwave, seismic signals and the size of the crater".
While some compared the explosion to a nuclear strike, claiming the yield reached to be one to two kilotonnes, the researchers stressed there is a considerable difference between nuclear blasts and the chemical ones.
"The pressure wave would be much faster because the energy release from an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction is much faster than the energy release from a chemical explosion", Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weaponry expert with the Federation of American Scientists told the outlet.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab previously blamed the devastating blast on a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertiliser left in the port since 2014. The explosion inflicted damage of around $10-15 billion on the city and was registered as a 3.3-magnitude earthquake, with the effects of the explosion felt by people miles away from the blast site.