NORTH KOREA TESTS NUCLEAR WEAPON
September 3rd, 2017Via: Reuters:
North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sunday, which it said was a successful detonation of an advanced hydrogen bomb, in a dramatic escalation of the isolated state’s stand-off with the United States and its allies.
The announcement from Pyongyang came a few hours after international seismic agencies detected a manmade earthquake near the North’s test site, which Japanese and South Korean officials said was around 10 times more powerful than the tremor picked up after its last test a year ago.
There was no independent confirmation that the detonation was a hydrogen bomb rather than an atomic device.
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Any chance this test is just trumped-up conventional explosives?
Middle of the road estimates of the yield are at 100kt. So… Pretty safe to assume it was a nuclear weapon of some veriety. There’s nothing about particle release yet, as U.S. and others are still collecting those data. It will probably be weeks before a more accurate estimate of the yield is known.
Is the warhead in the image released by North Korea real? Hmm. That’s pretty impressive miniaturization over the previous who-knows-what’s they’ve shown, if it’s real and not a prop. Also, was it actually a thermonuclear weapon? Questions, questions. My guess is that is was a partially successful test of a fusion boosted weapon. But who knows. People who do this for a living are guessing yields that vary by nearly an order a magnitude at this stage.
@Dennis Great question. Until someone can definitively answer that one everything else is suspect.
As far as I’m concerned, if people want to suggest that N.Korea is a real threat with nuclear weapons then then need to address the related questions – where would they get such technology from and why? Answers that vary by an order of magnitude are as meaningful as yellowcake and “weapons of mass destruction”. If that’s all you’ve got, then it’s only fear-porn.
Please do some basic reading about how yields of underground nuclear weapon tests are estimated.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41144326
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/08/25/science-knows-if-a-nation-is-testing-nuclear-bombs/#69c629051a04
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nuclear-weapons-north-korea-kim-jong-un-earthquake-seismology-h-bomb-a7928441.html
If you want to believe that Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, the U.S and all of the geologists and organizations that monitor this stuff are making it up, that’s fine. That makes no sense at all, though, if you spend a few minutes reading about this topic.
How likely is it that North Korea dug a hole and placed 100kt (or even 50kt) of high explosives inside and then set it off?
Not likely.
All of the following are noise level events compared to what just happened in North Korea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions
Do you believe that North Korean scientists developed atomic weapons?
@alvinroast
Yes, North Korean scientists have developed nuclear weapons most likely with the aid of someone else. Nuclear “secrets” have been on sale for years. Well documented in US General Accountability Office reports from about 1990 onwards. The U.S. just LOVES scientific collaboration with foreign nationals. Pakistani and Indian scientist visit Los Alamos. And ooh la la. One year late both countries had nuclear weapons capabilities. In N Korea’s case, who knows, maybe someone put the plans inside one of a basketball. But assuredly, the nuclear codes are certainly “for sale.” War is the currency these days. Humans who populate the planet – good luck.
Thanks, Kevin, for the article on conventional explosions.
When I was a child, we used to tightly wrap our firecrackers (Tom Thumbs, Double Happys and the occasional Thundercracker) in a bit of paper and, if done right, it would make the bang louder. I’d wondered if maaaaybe something like that was possible with conventional explosives.