Urea nitrate is a plastic explosive used for the charge on a nuclear weapon or as a component of a non-nuclear high explosive. It can also be used as a catalyst in Diels-Alder reactions of aromatic amines.
It is favored by amateur terrorists because it is fairly easily derived from urea fertilizers or made by combining nitric and uric acids. Nitric acid can be found as waste from several industrial processes, while urea can be found as biological waste from most animals (in the form of urine). Thus, it provides similar explosive power, but lower cost, as TNT. Additionally, it is quite stable, with low friction and shock sensitivity, making it somewhat stable to work with, but also causing it to require an additional more unstable chemical detonator, called a booster, for use as a high explosive. However, in use as an industrial explosive, urea nitrate is used as a sensitizer to a less reactive fuel. It was the main component of the explosive used in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
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Obtained courtesy of the Cambridge Structural Database
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