There are some (apparently rather senseless) new regulations about mostly oxidisers which can be used to make explosives which have just come in in the UK and which will apply/already apply to all EU countries.
If you are a private person you will need a license, UK version costs £40 for three years, to buy the following, at higher than the listed concentrations:
hydrogen peroxide:12% w/w
nitromethane: 30% w/w
nitric acid: 3% w/w
sodium chlorate: 40% w/w
potassium chlorate: 40% w/w
sodium perchlorate: 40% w/w
potassium perchlorate: 40% w/w
The idea is to make it hard for terrorists to make explosives. It
doesn't apply to limited companies or to people who use them in their
businesses.
In the case of hydrogen peroxide I can't see that it will achieve much; TATP and I think HTMD can be made with 12% peroxide, and at broadly similar yields to when 35% peroxide is used if the chemistry is tweaked a little.
The normal commercial 35%, the most concentrated form usually available, isn't sufficiently concentrated to make Sprengel explosives - it would need a good deal of further concentration to about 85% or more.
The few makers and sellers of HTP (peroxide at 85% or greater) have long been pretty cautious about not selling it to rocketeers, never mind to potential terrorists.
So as far as I can see making it harder to obtain peroxide in concentrations higher than 12% isn't going to actually achieve anything at all in terms of preventing terrorists from making explosives.
I'm pretty sure the 12% figure was chosen because 12% peroxide is used in medicine etc, and is commonly available from chemist's shops (pharmacies). It doesn't have much to do with stopping terrorists making explosives though.
Nitromethane explosives I don't know very much about, though 30% seems sufficient to make explosives to me - but 30% is used in drag racing, model engines, and so on. Again, the concentration seems to be chosen so as to not annoy too many people, rather than actually stopping terrorists.
Nitric acid @ >3% w/w is the one which potentially affects me, as I use it from time to time.
The normal commercial concentration is about 68%, which with commercial 100% concentrated sulphuric acid is just about strong enough to make some lesser explosives like the weaker forms of nitrocellulose; but not the really interesting and powerful ones like nitroglycerine, RDX, TNT, and so on, for those you need 100%, which is not commonly available nor widely used.
However the clandestine chemist does not use 100% nitric acid to make the more interesting explosives, as it is very expensive, hard to use, and hard to obtain - he uses sodium or potassium nitrate in his nitrating mix instead of nitric acid.
The industrial chemist uses commercial nitric acid and oleum, fuming sulphuric acid with extra dissolved sulphur trioxide, approximately 130% sulphuric acid: banning the latter would probably be much less of a burden, as I don't know of any private or hobby uses for it, whereas there are many such uses for nitric acid.
While you can still make nitrocellulose with commercial concentrated 68% nitric acid, at concentrations below 35% nitric acid isn't useful for making explosives - certainly it is far less useful than 12% peroxide, but 40% nitric acid is restricted, and 12% peroxide isn't. I don't quite understand that.
With the chlorates the concentration begins to be a bit more sensible, though the way the law is written you could still buy a mix of 40% sodium chlorate, 40% potassium chlorate and 20% sodium perchlorate...
Actually, I don't know how sensible it is: people who use chlorate for anything other than pyro are few and far between, especially as the use of chlorate weedkillers has been banned for some years now.
However, I haven't heard of terrorists actually using chlorates for explosives. It is possible, but at best it's rare.
As for the perchlorates, that seems to me to be more about stopping homemade fireworks than terrorists. Perchlorates aren't really that useful for terrorist bombs, nitrates are cheaper. more reliable, and less watched.
Users of theatrical flash powder, usually supplied as two powders to be mixed, one of which is fairly pure potassium perchlorate, will likely be annoyed about the new restrictions on perchlorates though.
The regulations don't restrict ammonium perchlorate. However in the UK at least you do need a (much-more-expensive) license to make APCP rocket fuel.
They don't restrict ammonium nitrate either, which terrorists most definitely do use in making explosives...? Yeah, it's fertiliser. Can't regulate that.
Sigh. -- Peter Fairbrother
