Russian meteor strike had force of nuclear bomb, says scientist

Washington: The meteor strike in a Russian city that left numerous people injured, had exploded in the atmosphere with the force of an atomic bomb, according to an American researcher. According to Andrew Cheng from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory , United States, it is not surprising that the meteor, which is estimated to be about 10 tons and 49 feet wide, had this effect as even a 10-meter size object has the same energy as a nuclear bomb, Fox News reports. The meteor, which reportedly released several kilotons of energy above the region, may have caused serious damage on the city of Chelyabinsk because of its pollution and the nuclear and chemical weapons disposal facilities near the city, the report added. According to Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace, the meteor struck only 60 miles from the Mayak nuclear storage and disposal facility, which holds dozens of tons of weapons-grade plutonium A chemical weapons disposal facility at Shchuchye also contains some 6,000 tons of nerve agents, including Sarin and VX, about 14 percent of the chemical weapons that Russia is committed to destroy, the report added. ANI