The Prague Post
http://www.aaaradiotaxi.cz/index.php?xSET=lang&xLANG=2
July 20th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Book of Lists ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague accommodation
Prague Art & Antiques Prague Art Prague Antiques

Home » Archives » Business

Explosia looking past Semtex

Twenty years after Lockerbie, plastic explosive lives on

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 14th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Explosives are pumped into quarry drill holes and then detonated.
enlarge
It has been almost 20 years since the Lockerbie bombing, when one pound of the plastic explosive Semtex detonated aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over southwest Scotland. The blast, and subsequent crash, killed 270 people and raised public awareness of the hard-to-detect explosive.
It could be expected that, in a world that has gone terrorism-mad in the past decade, companies would stop making such explosives. But, to this day, Semtex continues to be produced and sold in small quantities in Pardubice, 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) east of Prague, by Explosia, the company that first invented it.
Times have changed since Lockerbie, Ladislav Lehký is quick to point out. As director of Explosia’s research arm, he spearheaded the development of an explosives marker that is easily recognized by detection tools at airports, similar to the way a powerful fragrant strikes the nose. And Explosia is hardly the company it used to be under communism.
“Semtex is made in minimal amounts and does not make up an important part of Explosia’s turnover [anymore],” Lehký said. Overall, Explosia produces about 10,000 tons of industrial explosives a year, making it one of the smaller manufacturers in Europe. The company ran a profit of 15.7 million Kč ($970,000) in 2007.
Those profits went to the state, which reacquired the company in 2002 after several international media reports found that army-stock Semtex had fallen into rogue hands. The reacquisition, coming just months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was posited by the Industry and Trade Ministry as part of “the international campaign against terrorism [that] is under way.”
Although the American plastic explosive C4 may have caused even more destructive explosions in history than Semtex, the latter has long been surrounded by a myth that it is undetectable. This could have been true in the 1980s, when counterterrorism measures at airports had yet to be introduced, Lehký said.
Today, plastic explosives are chemically branded according to the Montreal convention on marking of plastic explosives, signed in 1991, he said. Lehký’s department actively contributed to the synthesis of a commonly used marker, the compound DMDB (dimetyldinitrobutan).
The Czech Army’s stock is now fully marked, Lehký said. Semtex is still used for military purposes, for example the destruction of ammunition that failed to explode, for mine clearance in former war zones and in combat engineering applications.
“As this comprehensive listing of applications makes clear, there is demand to export the plastic explosive, of course in accordance with laws applicable in the Czech Republic,” Lehký said.
Explosive history
The military background of Explosia is embedded in the company’s DNA. Founded in 1920, shortly after World War I, to supply explosives for the newly founded Czechoslovak Army, Explosia’s production range still catered heavily toward the military-industrial complex in 1989. Then, under the coupon privatization of the 1990s, Explosia became part of Aliachem, which was controlled by the chemical giant Unipetrol.
The subsequent split-up of Czechoslovakia and the bankruptcy of a part of the arms industry led to a massive fall in demand for two of Explosia’s products, gunpowder and smokeless powder. But, within a relatively short timeframe, Explosia developed a range of smokeless powders that are used to make sport and hunting ammunition and recruited new clients in Western Europe and the United States. There was never a danger of bankruptcy, Lehký said.
Explosia’s products are irreplaceable in a number of civilian applications: Engineers drive tunnels into mountains, construct highways and demolish buildings using various kinds of its explosives. Coal and mineral mining utilizes them too.
In quarrying, liquid explosives are filled into drilled holes to extract rocks or construction materials — this accounts for most of today’s explosives sales. In hardening operations, explosive materials are applied to metal surfaces and detonated, making the metal stiffer but more brittle.
Making all these explosives looks simple but requires constant attention to safety. “It’s a mechanical operation. The components are mixed and packaged into ready-to-use explosives,” Lehký said. The state mining board, environmental protection agency and other bodies continuously monitor this essentially low-tech process.
While its current explosives business is doing well, Explosia’s research arm is heading in new directions. Using source materials that are not themselves classified as explosives can minimize costs and increase safety.
The latest explosives being launched on the market use water-in-oil emulsions and ammonium nitrate, commonly used in agriculture as fertilizer, but also an oxidizing agent in explosives. Liquid explosives like this can be prepared on location, minimizing the risks incurred by transportation and storage.
To deter misuse by terrorists, the next generation of explosives will likely be interspersed with thousands of small metal particles to trigger metal detectors at airports. To facilitate bomb disposal and subsequent investigations, a hologram will be imprinted on these particles.
In recent years, terrorists have increasingly turned their attention to improvised explosive devices.
“The use of homemade explosives for terrorist attacks is a huge problem,” Lehký said. “These demolition charges can be made even with minimal knowledge of chemistry. The risk involved with amateur home made explosives is very high, of course. In addition, these are usually very sensitive explosives whose detection is very problematic,” he said.

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


Other articles in Business (14/05/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Book of Lists

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.