Thanks Aug. You made me notice that I hadn't finished my homework. To actually MELT the aluminum into the liquid phase, I'd need the heat of fusion figured in too.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fu...ls-d_1266.html

Lists the heat of fusion for aluminum as 398 kJ/kg, or about 171.11 BTU/lb. For UA175, the "smaller" of the two calculations above, this adds 22 million BTU's, for a total of 54 million BTU's needed to melt the aluminum UA175 "heat sink." A BTU is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 lb of water 1 deg_F.

In other words, 54 million BTU's would heat 1,080,000 lbs (or approx. 135,000 gallons) of water +50 deg_F.