Man, that's why I read Political Animal. I don't have any friends with access to seismological data of any kind. I am such a friggin loser.

Can you say Bluff?

KJI wanting some more attention perhaps? World press spending too much time on Iraq? Take a hollow in the ground, fill it with 1kt of conventional explosive, pop it off?

I do agree the whole thing is odd; it is worse than useless to have fewer than 5 nukes that you are sure will work (which is why the Pakistanis tested 3 in a row). Firing off one that doesn't even work leaves you in a worse position strategically.

Cranky

It seems to me that if you only have a limited amount of plutonium, like NK has, you might want to use as little as possible for a test.

Could have been a dud, I suppose, but I don't think we can assume that, and I don't see that it matters all that much in a practical sense- even a "dud" nuke capability is a pretty good deterrent against the sort of military adventurism that got us into Iraq.

Maybe it was actually one thousand tons of TNT.

Here's a question: did the announcement of the test from North Korea come before or after the seismic event? Is it possible at all that they had *no* test, but are just bluffing? That is, there was a small earthquake and they are using that as "evidence" that they had a test? Or is that inconsistent with the seismograph readings?

Maybe it was just a really big party.

Ok, what they measured was the "whump" of Hastert's body after it was dumped out of an Air Force helicopter in the dead of night.

They get Foley off the front page, and they get rid of Hastert. It's a twofer!

A BOMB OR A DUD?

Good question Kevin. With the Tom Foley "scandal" dying a quick death, I'm certain the North Korean nuclear bomb test will be a bomb. It will be the explosion heard around the world and middle America. Americans will see the bomb as a failure of Clinton diplomacy that tried to buy off the tin pot dictator with flowers and money rather than threaten the North Korea with lethal force. As Bush threatens Kim to either back down or prepare to be invaded, watch for the American people to rally in support to our Commander-in-Chief in this time of war. I predict a Republican landslide in the November elections as the American people support our Commander-in-Chief in his war against the terrorists state of North Korea.

Kevin,

The device they tested was a plutonium device, which requires implosion (as opposed to a uranium device, which can be detonated in a simple gun-barrel type rapid assembly).

Implosion is a tricky thing, very unnatural and hard to get right. The material being imploded is fluid-like under the pressures and temperatures involved, and fluid doesn't like to be densified.

Another important factor is the purity of plutonium. For good results it should be 95% Pu-239 or better. Pu-240, which is always present as an impurity, is a copius neutron emitter and will pre-explode the mass before the proper density is achieved for best explosive yield. I'm guessing the North Koreans chemically purified their plutonium from their reactors, but had no means of isotopically purifying it.

and fluid doesn't like to be densified.

No, but republicans love being densified. In fact, by now, it's unlikely they could get any more dense.

"it is worse than useless to have fewer than 5 nukes that you are sure will work"

Truman didn't seem to think so.

"Tom Foley scandal"

Don't quite believe the former Speaker of the House and Ambassador to Japan was caught up in any scandal.

The only "scandal" believed by the right was when he voted for the Brady Bill.

I caught that Paul-3. Tom will be quite shocked to learn of this development, won't he?

The updated richter magnitude? Sounds fishy. What do Korean and Japanese seismologists say? There must be a million and 1 seismographs in Japan alone.

For excellent explanations of the seismic data, see this thread at MetaFilter, particularly these two comments. The short summary is that there's two materials you can use to build a nuke- U238 or P239. U238, which is what Iran is using, is harder to produce, but easier to build a bomb out of. P239, which is what NK is using, is easier to produce, but harder to build a bomb out of, because there's a bigger tendency for the plutonium chunks to blow apart before the reaction becomes self sustaining. That's called a fizzle, and based on the public data, its probably what happened here.

www.armscontrolwonk.com claims it's a fizzle.

I don't have any friends with access to seismological data of any kind. I am such a friggin loser.

Cracked me up.

Sorry for the nitpicks:

It's U235 they make the bombs out of, and Pu239.

One more geeky nuke point:

Kevin's statement about how it's harder to produce a low-yield weapon is not precise.

It is very very hard to produce a low-yield weapon that has the hydrodynamics and reaction history of a larger weapon. In other words, if you want to keep advancing your arsenal technologically but have imposed a test moratorium on yourself (i.e. the United States), you try and cheat by exploding very low yield surrogates that are seismically indistinguishable from large dynamite explosions. But to design a very low yield surrogate that actually has relevance for stockpile munitions in the 300 kt range is damn near impossible.

However, to make a low-yield device in general is less difficult. Especially given doubts about the purity of plutonium used (see my post above), it is entirely plausible that the North Koreans had a "fizzler".

it is worse than useless to have fewer than 5 nukes that you are sure will work

I completely disagree. We're not talking about the old days with the USSR, where there was theoretical first strike capability and tactical battlefield nukes.

In headier days, Bush put NK on his short list of nations to be changed, by force if necessary, and then he invaded the first one on the list. NK doesn't have to have enough nukes to defeat the US, and that's not their goal. They just want something that will give Bush pause, and even one nuke that they could put in a shipping container to the US or give to a terrorist group will do that.

As for the "Blame Cinton for this too!" shrieks I am hearing - the North Koreans agreed to suspend their program in exchange for food and energy aid and two light-water reactors to be built by Japan and South Korea. This arrangement was known as the "Agreed Frame" and the deal was struck in 1994. It held until Bush termed them part of the "Axis of Evil." Then they kicked out the inspectors, fired up the reactor and pulled 800 spent fuel rods out of the secured cooling pond and resumed their program.

Greg in FL is spot on in his explanation of how a Plutonium device differs from a Uranium device, but he doesn't need an endorsement from me, he knows he is right.

The significance of this is not in the size of the blast, or even in how successful it was. the significance is this: Will it start an arms race in the region? North Lorea was a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty. Who is going to withdraw next?

"The updated richter magnitude? Sounds fishy."

Richter magnitudes are regularly revised in the first few days after any event.

U-238 is depleted uranium. That is the low-rad nuclear materian that makes armament casings and renders armor obsolete, like a bullet through tinfoil - it's a density thang, ya know.

USGS still has it at 4.2

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/ustqab.php

Where is this 3.5 number from?

It's all Andy Richter's fault.

Okay, perhaps it is a dud, but if it's new forms of torture in today's lineup, is it going to be bunker busters tomorrow?

I wonder if the James Baker brigade has been whispering into poppy Bush’s ear, “you’ve got control that torture loving, trigger happy boy of yours before Cheney get little Bushie to go and do something really insane.”

Where is this 3.5 number from?

Faux News?

Here is the link to the Inchon USGS stations recording of the event.

Now see, before this semester, I didn't have access to the geological databases. So glad I changed my concentration.

This maybe the second failed detonation. Remember, there never was a satisfactory explanation of what happened in that N. Korean rail yard over a year ago.

Has anyone dug up comparisons between what Pakistan has tested and what N. Korea says it tested? I still have a tough time believing that what Pakistan has is all that sophisticated either. Both countries are dirt poor and neither one has much of home grown techonology base to draw from.

This event (as well as the lack of progress vis a vis Iran) shows the uselessness of the United Nations. The UN is supposed to solve this sort of problem. We should stop wasting money on their dues.

I now see no hope of preventing nuclear proliferation. It's more and more likely that nuclear weapons will eventually wind up in the hands of terrorists or an unstable regime and will be used to destroy a city or two.

Have a nice day.

P239, which is what NK is using, is easier to produce, . . . Posted by: Greg

Gee, I thought the problem was that no one, including the S. Koreans who have the best intelligence on the North, knew what exactly they were doing or capable of. Talking out of our hat perhaps?

Just kick 'em out of New York and make the entire complex a Trump Hotel, huh?

Hows about we try to fix the problems at the UN? We don't pay our UN dues anyway.

JeffII >"This maybe the second failed detonation. Remember, there never was a satisfactory explanation of what happened in that N. Korean rail yard over a year ago..."

So you are suggesting the rail yard event was a nuclear accident/mistake & no radiation signature was detected (at least that is in the public record) ?

Very odd indeed

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact....Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." - newshog@gmail.com

The UN is supposed to solve this sort of problem.

the UN is never any more powerful than its strongest members allow it to be. it should come as no surprise that it's rather weak right now, when the US govt does little to give it any teeth.

My guess it was a dud, not a fake.

It's hard to get an implosion-device right the first time, it takes testing and practice. The design also likely came from AQ Khan - and there was similar controversy over the Pakistan tests.

It's possible that it was designed as a small-nuke on purpose, in order to create doubt and controversy - (an NK you SUSPECT of having nukes is more dangerous than one you KNOW does not have them).

But I don't believe in the "small-by-design" theory. Personally, I think that it's a defective AQ Khan design (supposedly, it's a plutonium-based gun-type, which would be very inefficient at best, because the mass would disperse too quickly after criticality). NK may learn something by this test; or they may learn that they need to refine their design by a bunch.

Is this, perhaps, Karl Rove's "October Surprise" he has been promising his base?

It has been common knowledge in the intel community that the North Korean government had the capability. It is also common knowledge among the scientific community what they could do with those spent fuel rods.

Uranium is hard to refine and takes a series of cacsading centrifuges. But it is easy to build a bomb from. Plutonium is easy to refine, but hard to make a bonb from.

You develop a nuke with the technology and fuel source you have, not the technology and fuel source you wish you had.

The image that Global Citizen links to at the USGS has been picked up in the media, but the big wiggle is NOT the North Korean test. It is a later earthquake, Magnitude 6.0 in the Phillipines. The time axis on the left of the plot is GMT time. The North Korean blast was at 01:36 GMT, much earlier than the big signal in the INCH plot.

See http://www.iris.edu/news/special.html for the real waveforms.

Damn! It updates. Sorry about that!

Since the NK folk are also reportedly very good at building underground facilities, there's a possibility that the explosion was set off in a nonstandard cavity, which would change how the energy went into the surrounding rock. (US nuclear test happened in relatively small cavities, albeit with lots of long tunnels coming off them for test equipment.)

Even a crappy A-bomb would just wreck your whole day.

Quick plug: if you'd like the lowdown on the history and physics of atomic weapons, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb is both informative and an enjoyable read.

Paul makes a good point. If you set off a firecracher in a barrel of marshmallows, it will be a lot less percusive than one in open air.

We know what they could do - we have no fucking idea where they did it and what kind of det chamber was involved?

The North Koreans seemed unusually insistent that there was absolutely no release of radiation.

Is it normal, or easy, to achieve complete containment of the radiation?

It's possible that it was designed as a small-nuke on purpose, in order to create doubt and controversy - (an NK you SUSPECT of having nukes is more dangerous than one you KNOW does not have them). Posted by: Osama_Been_Forgotten

Unlike Iraq, N. Korea with or without nuclear weapons is a danger. Focusing on nuclear weapons is pointless as N. Korea's conventional capabilities massed near the DMZ are more than enough to fuck up the world economy with it being able to destroy much of Seoul, Sapporo and even Tokyo. We could not mount a first strike sufficient to avert this.

Since the NK folk are also reportedly very good at building underground facilities, there's a possibility that the explosion was set off in a nonstandard cavity, which would change how the energy went into the surrounding rock.

Interesting idea, could you design a giant super-resonance chamber that would create the impersonation of a nuclear seismic wave?

Where was the det chamber is the first question to ask in an attempt to get that answer, cld.

How far underground was it? What type of containment was put in place prior to detonation?

Containment is possible - witness Three Mile Island.

"criticality"

Holy crap, a new word. I find it odd that news reports keep showing these "sniffer" planes, that are supossed to detect trace radiation. Are they flying directly over the test sight? If so, how is that allowed? Can they detect radiation only after it's blown over the border?

In addition to finding released radionucleotides, a successfull atomic blast has a characteristic twin-peaked siezmic signature (the initial conventional explosion and then the nuke, I believe). As a non-expert looking at what's on the web I'd say that North Korea didn't get a sizable fission reaction.

As Bush threatens Kim to either back down or prepare to be invaded,

Invaded with what army?

Some people have completely lost touch with reality. The US has zero influence with North Korea, and the only people who do have some influence, the Chinese, will wag their fingers in public and laugh themselves sick in private.

> Is it normal, or easy, to achieve complete containment of the radiation?

No. It took many years and a lot of practice for the US to contain virtually all radioactive blast material at the Nevada Test Site. Ex-patriate of the Soviet Union say that they didnt achieve complete containment, and leaked regularly in their tests.

It's more and more likely that nuclear weapons will eventually wind up in the hands of terrorists or an unstable regime and will be used to destroy a city or two.

Oh, stop pissing yourself. Or perhaps that's what you really want, 'ex'?

My speculation: KJI's temper tantrums are now seismically-detectable.

Here's a good read, not about the bomb specifically.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200610/kaplan-korea

Matt Newman,
In case you haven't given up on an answer and found it yourself, the North Koreans told the Chinese that a test was imminent, the Chinese told the U.S. ambassador, and shortly afterward the explosion occurred.

Global,

Yes. You'd think they'd want everyone to know unequivocally, and letting a little radiation out might have been in their interest.

Unless they're being careful to demonstrate their sobriety and security as a nuclear power.

cleek wrote: the UN is never any more powerful than its strongest members allow it to be. it should come as no surprise that it's rather weak right now, when the US govt does little to give it any teeth.

What do you mean by "rather weak right now? The last time I can remember them doing something strong was over 50 years ago, when they authorized military action to fight agression in Korea.

And, how can you blame the US for failing to give them teeth? The Bush administration has done more than most to try to get the UN into action. Countries like France, China and Russia have blocked action at every key point.

Compare the last two Presidents. Bush did everything he could to get the UN to act in Iraq, including exaggerating the WMD threat. Bill Clinton, OTOH, didn't even try to get UN approval for his Kosovo incursion. Clinton may have been wiser than Bush. He recognized that that the UN would be useless, so there was no point in even trying to get action from them.

Clinton may have been wiser than Bush.

No argument there.

> Containment is possible - witness Three Mile Island.

In a public-health sense yes, cattle are not dying in the neighboring meadows -- but making the existence of a nuke undetectable is a far larger trick.

Bush did everything he could to get the UN to act in Iraq, including exaggerating the WMD threat. Bill Clinton, OTOH, didn't even try to get UN approval for his Kosovo incursion. Clinton may have been wiser than Bush. He--

didn't bullshit?

Your grasp on logic is quite staggering, 'ex'. The proof of the UN's ineffectiveness is that they didn't take the bait that too many in the US swallowed? You mean that other countries don't shit themselves at the first opportunity, and you're blaming them for having unsoiled underwear?

The original Pakistani tests came in at Richter 5.0 and were estimated to be about 40KT. Classically, what is referred to as 'nominal' yeild, the size of the detonation of a simple critical mass by either gun assembly or implosion, is usually cited as a range roughly from 15 to 25 kilotons. Significantly less than that looks like either a sophisticated design or a implosion fizzle.

cld >"...Is it normal, or easy, to achieve complete containment of the radiation?"

If you assume an underground event (which is what is involved here) then it depends on the specific geology of the site; type of rock, structure of the over burden, types of access to the chamber etc

Seems to me that those that know aren`t talking much so far

"...This is not a game." - Lorie Van Auken (2001.09.11 widow)

The smallest nukes ever built, tested and deployed were the US Davy Crockett short-range rocket-launched weapons. The two devices that were tested in the early 60s yielded about 20 tonnes equivalent. They were implosion Pu devices, missing most of the yield enhancers a regular A-bomb design would have (thick jacket, beryllium neutron reflector, alpha source kickstart) but because of this they only weighed about 25kg.

Designing and building efficient implosion lenses for Pu bombs isn't that difficult for a state or government to do; the metallurgical science is well-known and the computer modelling is trivial (by today's standards). Refining the design and testing can be done without using Pu until an optimum model is produced. I don't think anyone has ever tested a device that didn't produce close to the expected yield, at least not in the modern era.

As someone else said, underground tests can be "rigged" by detonating the device in, say, a large chamber filled with water. This messes up the seismic signature making it very difficult for outsiders to work out what the true yield was. I've seen this referred to as a "bubblewrap" test; it's thought that some of the last French tests in the Pacific (before they signed the Test Ban Treaty) were of this sort.

The NK government has shown it has working nukes but no-one outside Pyongyang knows just how good they are; for such a secretive organisation that's a win-win situation. The only thing for sure is the test wasn't that of an 100kTonne-plus H-bomb; they're too big to bubblewrap.

New right wing talking point via ex-lib:
"Bush did everything he could to get the UN to act in Iraq, including exaggerating the WMD threat"
Man, these right wing extremists will say anthing!

Yes - I am in agreement - containing the fallout from a nuclear detonation would be much more difficult. But rumor also has it that the NorKs are pretty good at underground facilities. We just don't know yet.

The French did use the "bubblewrap" method at Mururoa in the Bikini Atoll - and blew up the rainbow Warrior just for good measure in the harbor of the worlds only "Nuclear Free Zone." What pussies.

Never-was-a-liberal: As far as UN intervention is concerned, how soon you forget... Gulf War I was a UN action, to kick Saddam out of Kuwait. The UN forces included the US, Saudis, French, Canadians, British and many others. Japan and several other countries coughed up cash money to pay for the effort since the action had the UN's complete blessing.

Another viewpoint, ex-lib...

This event (as well as the lack of progress vis a vis Iran) shows the uselessness of the [Bush Administration and Republicans in general.] The [Bush Administration and Republicans in general] is supposed to solve this sort of problem. We should stop wasting [votes] on their [party].

>> it is worse than useless to have fewer
>> than 5 nukes that you are sure will work

> I completely disagree.

And I disagree your disagreement ;-) In order to have a credible nuclear threat, the power involved would have to test three (to prove it was not a fluke and/or one-time shot) and provide believeable evidence that it had two more in reserve (one it could use and one it could reserve for the 2nd round).

Otherwise it is just chest beating. Which KJI is quite good at however.

Cranky

RobG >"...Man, these right wing extremists will say anthing!"

Yea, sometimes even the truth

The mind is its own place,
and in itself can make a heaven of hell,
and a hell of heaven. - John Milton

If the blast is only equivalent to 550 t, perhaps that was what it was - 550 t of dynamite or other explosives. It's a fizzle, it's a dud - perhaps it's a feint. Saddam has a big "Beware of Dog" sign to keep Bush way. It wasn't very effective.

So NK has a "Cave Canem" sign, and a motion-sensored tape recording of a ferocious dog barking. Whether or not it works to prevent Bush from blowing up the house to eliminate the threat of dog bites is yet to be determined.

Off topic - Al, you crack me up!

Bush did everything he could to get the UN to act in Iraq, including exaggerating the WMD threat.

WTF ?

Bush was going to have his war with or without the UN.

The Kool-Aid is in an IV drip, running wide open. But if the molarity of the bloodstream changes, death results. So carry on.

ckelly wrote: This event (as well as the lack of progress vis a vis Iran) shows the uselessness of the [Bush Administration and Republicans in general.] The [Bush Administration and Republicans in general] is supposed to solve this sort of problem. We should stop wasting [votes] on their [party].

You have a point, ckelly. However, the problems of Iran and NK aren't new. Jimmy Carter's mismanagement of Iran allowed the Mullahs to take over. Carter's negotiation with NK during Clinton's Presidency allowed NK to secretly develop their nukes. AQ Khan was selloing nuclear technology during Clinton's Presidency. Bush finally stopped him.

So, you can blame Bush for not solving the nuclear proliferation problem, but I think other Presidents have done no better, and Carter was a lot worse.

cleek, it may or may not be true that Bush was committed to ousting Saddam, but the fact remains that he tried very hard to do so via the UN.

ex-liberal:

By lying to it.

Bob

John Foster Dulles set the Islamic Revolution in motion. history has a long view. It started before inauguration day in 1977, you know.

never a-liberal >You have a point...the fact remains that he tried very hard to do so via the UN."

Nice propaganda spew that you messed up by claiming there were facts involved thereby exposing your lack of knowledge about anything resembling a fact not to mention of recent human history; quit using J.Carter et al as strawmen in your delusional babbling for money from the Rovians

"If you don't deal with reality, reality will deal with you" - C.J. Campbell

Was this a failed test? A 10 kiloton nuke that fizzled? Not a nuke at all? (The North Koreans seemed unusually insistent that there was absolutely no release of radiation.) Or what? ... I should add that Jeff, who's an old high school friend of mine, stresses that "My skepticism is not to be taken as a conclusion that North Korea is bluffing. A reliable detection of bomb-generated radionuclides would prove that they were not." I agree. There just seem to be several oddly suspicious things about the North Korean announcement.

Oh please.

While it's entirely possible DPRK's test may have failed, it was not a bluff and hardly a surprise. According to NTI, PRC officials reported on 10/5 DPRK was "more or less ready" to detonate and that the test would occur "2,000 meters inside a coal mine."

Close observers were also aware DPRK would take precautions to minimize venting (i.e., radioactive leakage):

"The current thinking is that they have a horizontal tunnel in the side of a hill," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "If you have a lot of venting, you give technical intelligence to enemies as to how it works; You want to have many hundreds of feet of rock above you and you might have to tunnel in over 1,000 feet to get that rock above you."

ROK intelligence officials confirming topography & site:

"We detected the explosive sound from Hwadaeri near Kilju in North Hamgyong Province at 10:36 a.m.(KST)," a senior Defense Ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the information.

Officials from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said the test appears to have been conducted at a mountain close to a missile test site from where the communist state launched seven ballistic missiles in early July.

"We believe a nuclear test was conducted around 10:36 a.m. this morning and the (suspected) location of the test is about 30 kilometers away from Punggye-ri in Kilju" which intelligence officials had previously suspected to be a possible test site, an official from the state spy agency was quoted as telling the National Assembly Intelligence Committee.

"We believe the test was conducted under a mountain with an altitude of 360 meters," the NIS official was quoted by Rep. Chung Hyung-keun of the opposition Grand National Party as saying.

Considering the low altitude of the mountain, the intelligence office believes the nuclear test was conducted inside a horizontal tube instead of a vertically-dug tunnel, according to Chung.

general comment--if the bomb is plutonium based, a fizzle is easier to believe. There is exquisite metallurgical and explosives engineering needed to make a plutonium implosion device work properly, and this is one of the barriers to even state developed nukes. The hard part with uranium is enriching to a critical density, but once you do making a bomb is really easy. The hard part with plutonium is the engineering. It is possible it was a dud because the implosion failed--if it is not quick enough then it will fizzle.

I think that it's a defective AQ Khan design (supposedly, it's a plutonium-based gun-type, which would be very inefficient at best, because the mass would disperse too quickly after criticality)

Still can get the job done with the added "bonus" of being a very dirty bomb as well. Smaller-than-"optimal" nudet but quite high levels of fallout, with or without a ground burst.

No Pu-239 bomb has ever tested successfully the first time.

It isn't the instability of the fissible materials that makes this development so potentially dangerous. It is the potential instability that this development can set off in the region, no matter how successful, or not, the test might have been.

Does anyone know where Godzilla is these days? Maybe he tripped.

Richard Rhodes other nuke-book (Dark Sun) is equally impressive: it includes a detailed description of the awesome 'Mike' fusion bomb, with a diagram that makes you feel you could build one out in the garage.

Plutonium? Oh man! I thinked we wuz supposed to use Kryptonite!

This test really doesn't change much, except maybe to add a few Patriot batteries to some countries' wish list. Nobody wants to invade North Korea and they aren't likely to invade the South.

I question the timing. You'd think Dear Leader would have wanted the nuke to go off in time for the Sunday shouting heads. But they're off by a day

What'd they do, forget about the International Date Line, or what?

Praedor Atrebates >"...the added "bonus" of being a very dirty bomb as well. Smaller-than-"optimal" nudet but quite high levels of fallout..."

Maybe that`s what they wanted to test, a "dirty bomb" for uses other than what most are assuming...

If you stop and think about it, scary indeed

"The wind blows over the surface of the lake. In this way, the effects of the invisible are made visible." - I Ching

I thought about that too. A dirty bomb would be at least as frightening as a conventional nuke. And a hell of a lot easier to conceal, move and detonate in a civilian area.

One reason for a developing a small nuke is to put it onto one of their rockets.

Global Citizen: No Pu-239 bomb has ever tested successfully the first time.

Excuse me? What about this one?

Also, when a country, such as France, is known to have nuclear weapons, cloaking the yeild makes sense. However, the whole point of this exercise is to prove that the DPRK really has a working nuclear weapon. I would think that they wanted to make sure that the radiation was contained, but that the yield would be obvious. "Bubblewrapping" the weapon makes little sense in this case. The reports that the DPRK is hurrying to set up another test makes a lot of sense, if the first was a fizzle.

North Korea doesn't have the technology for suitcase nukes - it has to be a partial failure as a test - scattered components before full fission or too low a grade of high yield material.

You know, the GOP talking point will be this was all Clinton's fault because the Bush and the GOP whiny ass titty babies are never responsible for anything.

Claude Muncy: You know, I meant to pose that as a question, and I was toggling screens and running out the door to class. Mea Culpa.

Our friends at the USGS, who should be the foremost experts in the country on all matters seismic, put the magnitude of the shock at 4.2 on the Richter scale. Depending on the geologic composition of the site, this could make the explosion as powerful as 2-15 kT. In any case, the numbers being cited by experts of 550 tons appears to be far too low for the observed shock.

5 million tons of camel dung stored in a cave accidently detonated.

Easter Lemming Liberal News >"North Korea doesn't have the technology for suitcase nukes - it has to be..."

It doesn`t HAVE TO BE anything

And what makes you think they would need to do suitcase sized device(s) ?

Quit projecting your sense of how things have to be onto others, particularly people from another culture; it is soooo ReThuglican after all

"...Only the most naive gamblers bet against physics, and only the most irresponsible bet with their grandchildren's resources..." - William H. Calvin

"Personally, I think that it's a defective AQ Khan design (supposedly, it's a plutonium-based gun-type"

Is there a source or sources for this?

The accounts I've seen all refer to Khan hawking an implosion design, though that was for HEU. That's what he sold to Libya, anyway. Supposedly it's a 1960s Chinese design that Pakistan obtained and used for their first weapons.

I'm not aware of anyone attempting a Pu gun design; the concept was abandoned in the early stages of the Manhattan Project for the exact reasons (preinitiation) that the previous post cites.

This paper in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America seems to indicate (on page S151) using data obtained from previous nuclear tests of known yields that the estimated magnitude of 4.2 for the shock from the explosion indicvates a much larger yield than 550 tons of TNT.

Okay, just a couple of questions and an observation.
1- why would NK say that they have tested a Nuke when some of the empirical evidence doesn't support that ? (no radiation and inconsistent seismographs)

2- In any event, what options does the US have?

3- comment - OMG- between the weapon and seismographic knowledge- this have been a fairly impressive series of posts.

Finally, Trashhauler, why do you believe that NK would not invade SK ?

If the magnitude of 4.2 holds, which it seems to be doing on the USGS site, then the yield was about 2KT.

Hmmm...Thinking about the plot of the last Bond film, could this be some kind of massive conventional bomb meant to detonate a mass of land mines in front of a massive invading infantry?

You should get your Yale friend to guest blog sometime. Climate change, earthquakes, my missing moho, etc.

Science Friday?

C'mon, we know that both Bush and foreign governments can spin things.

Wouldn't western Europe possibly have reasons to spin this? More so than Russia, especially, spinning a high blast number?

First, it's pretty clear that there was a fission yield. The technology that can determine the seismic "signature" of a nuke yield has been with us since 1963 or so: a nuke detonation takes place much faster than a conventional explosion and thus results in a seismic spike with characteristics significantly different than, say, TNT. Historically, the USGS at Golden, Colorado tagged these events as "boxes" on a map. The rest---including conventional explosions are characterized as circles. The N. Korean event was characterized on the map as a box. It was a nuke.

As for the suggestion that it was a dud, I think this is just an exercise in political damage control: "sure it was a nuke, but it was a "failed nuke."

If anyone evaluated only the U.S. "safety" tests at the Nevada Test Site during Operation Hardtack II in 1958 or thereabouts, they would conclude that all were "failed nuclear tests." Let's take a look at the yields of our own tests during that period: Otero: 0.038 kt; Eddy: 0.083 kt; Hidalgo: 0.077 kt; Quay: 0.079 kt; Hamilton: 0.0012 kt; Dona Ana: 0.037 kt; Vesta: 0.024 kt; Chavez: 0.0006 kt; Humboldt: 0.0078 kt; Titania: 0.0002 kt.

In fact, the engineers were evaluating accident scenarios and running proof tests on weapon design. Thanks in part to those tests we know that it doesn't take a carefully-designed implosion apparatus to push plutonium to critical mass. Other designs and configurations do the job very well indeed.

It is entirely possible the N.Koreans were testing a design and really didn't give a flip about whether they reached the "nominal" 10 kiloton yield figure.

The thing to take away from the North Korean shot event is not the size of the yield, but the fact there WAS a yield. Anyone suggesting that the test was a dud should review the history of the US nuclear testing program.

I suspect that the next shot--and there WILL be one--will give the skeptics their 10-15 kt yield figure.

Given they don't have missile technology to launch a warhead, perhaps they are deliberately designing a size manageable enough for them to deliver in another way, perhaps in a small plane that would avoid radar before reaching Seoul for example. I'm just guessing.
The above posting by rmiller looks to me like the most knowledgeable explanation I've seen anywhere.

Basically, every country's first nuke has been on the order of 12 kilotons. (Pakistan claimed theirs was 40 kt, but we don't believe them.)
Making a nuke smaller than 12 kt is a lot harder than making a 12 kt nuke. (Basically, you use a lot of explosives to compress the U or Pu into a tighter than usual sphere.) The only reason you'd do so is if you had a shortage of fissionable material.

North Korea does not seem to have a shortage of fis. mat.

My guess is that this is a sub-critical explosion caused by the explosives timing being off or not being fast enough. Then you get a little bit of the fis. mat. going critical and blowing the mass apart before enough of it crosses the tipping point.

My conclusion is buttressed by the wildly over-hyped claims of the N. Korean missiles. (Guess what? They don't have a missile capable of reaching North America after all.) There is a pocket industry in exaggerating North Korea's military prowess - and don't get me started on the artillery aimed at Seoul.

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mcdruid

I agree with you re threat overestimation but I do believe they have 1000 artillery tubes pointed at Seoul.

they have been preparing for the end of the ceasefire since it was signed in 1953.

They have 130mm guns which outrange the NATO standard issue 155mm (the same ones which gave the South Africans such trouble in Angola in the 70s). And they have buried them in tunnels-- they have had 50 years to dig in.

If they used nerve gas on Seoul, millions might die. If they use conventional artillery rounds, tens of thousands (concrete buildings are amazingly robust, and I think most South Koreans have bomb shelters in the basement of their apartment buildings?).

I don't think it is likely that they yet have a nuclear warhead which can be placed in a missile to hit Tokyo, let alone San Francisco or Seattle.

What they probably have is 4-5 crude bombs you could strap under a plane. Get Seoul, yes. Tokyo? maybe not, unless they use trickery ('Evening in Byzantium' the terrorists replace 747s with 747s carrying atomic weapons).

The reality is, we are not going to attack them (because we can't be sure of getting all the warheads, and the fallout from ground burst nuclear weapons would pollute the northern hemisphere to a really serious extent) and they are (likely) not going to attack us.

Since we don't conduct our foreign policy with them with an acceptance of the above, we are engaging in flights of fancy.

I'm glad I babel-fished mmf铃声's remarks above and that I did not click the link.

Consider yourself warned.

With the data I see, I tend to agree this was a fizzle.

Two reasons. First, getting implosion right is hard. The famous quote is, "Half the effort of the Manhattan Project was getting implosion to work." (Of course, they didn't know it was possible, so they had to research a lot).

Second, I wonder how badly "crapped up" their plutonium is. I believe their plutonium came from their Soviet reactor's old fuel rods. If I can bore you for a moment, I'll go through the process with you:

1) Put U-238 into a reactor that has neutrons buzzing around by the trillions;

2) You want -one- neutron to "stick" to the U-238;

3) Remove the U-238+neutron, which is now Np-239.

It's bad if two or three neutrons "stick".

Some stuff happens (basically you need to wait) and the now unstable stuff becomes Plutonium-239 (Pu-239).

If 2 or 3 neutrons stuck, you have a problem; that's Pu-240 or Pu-241. They are seriously unstable and spray radiation, and try to predetonate the weapon. There's no way that I know of to seperate Pu-239 from -240 and -241.

You do try to hold down the -240 contamination by keeping the U-238 rod in there the optimum amount of time. And here you have a problem. If you're running the reactor to make power, you have a different priority for run time than for making plutonium. The N. Koreans by all reports ran that Sov reactor for energy. The U-238 was in there because fuel rods are typically 3% U-235 and 97% U-238.

So I deeply suspect that they have heavily contaminated Pu-239. With that, your bomb implosion had better be absolutely nailed down.

Since all this stuff is happening in microsecond time intervals (an atom splits each 10 nanoseconds; think of an A-bomb as a 0.10 MhZ or 100 Khz computer) the implosion wave has to hold the crushed core together physically for some time for neutron multiplication to build up so that a large number of Pu atoms split and release energy. If the implosion was weak in one spot, forget it.

Other problems could be a weak spot in their tamper, which helps hold neutrons in and helps hold the physical assembly together; insufficient initial neutrons, especially if they used an "urchin" to pop a few loose; overall bad quality control; a bad detonator; insufficient computer simulations; bad explosive blocks or bad physical size and shaping of the blocks... I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

I wonder how many North Korean scientists got shot yesterday.

Thanks, Dave

Yeah, I've seen the reports, even to tens of thousands of artillery tubes. Intel about North Korea's missiles is probably more reliable, and they were giving us ranges of 12,000 kilometers. Right, tell me another one.

Artillery "buried deep underground" isn't very useful. At least with the Maginot Line, they had devices to raise the guns up to shoot.

The Maginot Line example is worth mentioning for another reason, too. After the declaration of war, but before the beginning of hostilities, the French found that most of their artillery was useless: deteriorated or the wrong caliber. I don't believe the North Korean system is more competant than the French system was. Nor, for that matter, can they actually test their artillery without giving away the locations.

I wouldn't put much credence in nerve gas, either. It is not that effective against cities, artillery shells can't deliver enough to be anything but locally effective, and I would guess that the shelf life of DPRK's nerve gas too short to stockpile much.

Still, it is probably more of a threat than lettuce.

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