In summary:
The NIST reports attributed the collapses to jet fueled fires, which were not hot enough to produce molten steel or iron.
There was no evidence for molten steel or iron, and there was no reason to expect it.
Even if there had been molten steel or iron in the debris afterwards, it would have been irrelevant to the cause of the collapses.
The Best Evidence
Not one of those claims can be maintained:
The evidence of molten steel or iron cannot be called “irrelevant,” given the fact that the building fires, as NIST pointed out, cannot explain it. The only explanation NIST suggested was that, if there was molten steel or iron, it would have been “due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile.” But NIST claimed that the buildings were brought down by building fires, which at most could have reached 1,000°C (1,832°F.) So the idea that burning debris from these buildings could have reached anywhere close to the temperature needed to melt structural steel (1,482°C, 2,700°F), [11] without the help of explosive or incendiary material, is implausible. It is also unscientific. Physicist Steven Jones has written: “Are there any examples of buildings toppled by fires or any reason other than deliberate demolition that show large pools of molten metal in the rubble? I have posed this question to numerous engineers and scientists, but so far no examples have emerged. Strange then that three buildings in Manhattan, supposedly brought down finally by fires, all show these large pools of molten metal in their basements post-collapse on 9-11-2001. It would be interesting if underground fires could somehow produce large pools of molten steel, for example, but then there should be historical examples of this effect since there have been many large fires in numerous buildings. It is not enough to argue hypothetically that fires could possibly cause all three pools of orange-hot molten metal.” The fact that the pools of metal had an orange color was crucial, Jones explained, because something had raised the temperature of iron to more than 2,000°C (3,632°F). [12]
There were two types of evidence for molten steel or iron in the debris:
Physical evidence, which was presented in a 2002 report by FEMA and elsewhere.
Testimonial evidence from many credible witnesses, including firefighters and other professionals.
I. Physical Evidence
I-A. The 2002 FEMA Report
New York Times journalist James Glanz, writing near the end of 2001 about the collapse of WTC 7, reported that some engineers said that a “combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down,” but that this “would not explain,” according to Dr. Barnett, “steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.” [13]
Glanz was referring to Jonathan Barnett, a professor of fire protection engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Early in 2002, Barnett and two WPI colleagues published an analysis of a section of steel from one of the Twin Towers, along with sections from WTC 7, as an appendix to FEMA’s 2002 World Trade Center Building Performance Study. [14] Their discoveries were also reported in a WPI article entitled “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel,” which said:
“[S]teel — which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit [1538°C] — may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon — called a eutectic reaction — occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.”
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Originally Posted by Black Diamond
People want to have their cake and eat it too. Reality doesn't work that way.