posted on May, 6 2005 @ 06:44 AM
"Test Preparations
On 12 September 2004 The New York Times reported on a "series of actions by North Korea that some experts believe could indicate the country is
preparing to conduct its first test explosion of a nuclear weapon ... Some analysts in agencies that were the most cautious about the Iraq findings
have cautioned that they do not believe the activity detected in North Korea in the past three weeks is necessarily the harbinger of a test. ... One
official with access to the intelligence called it "a series of indicators of increased activity that we believe would be associated with a test,"
saying that the "likelihood" of a North Korean test had risen significantly in just the past four weeks. The activities included the movement of
materials around several suspected test sites, including one near a location where intelligence agencies reported last year that conventional
explosives were being tested that could compress a plutonium core and set off a nuclear explosion. But officials have not seen the classic indicators
of preparations at a test site, in which cables are laid to measure an explosion in a deep test pit."
North Korea could conduct a nuclear weapons test without advance preparations beind detected by American intelligence.
According to an analysis by Satoshi Morimoto of Takushoku University, " ... carrying out nuclear tests inside North Korea would be an extremely
sticky action. That is because this kind of nuclear testing could only be carried out underground. There is absolutely no way they could do in the air
or above ground. Even with underground nuclear testing, you normally need a fifty to sixty kilometer square of desert for a nuclear test. In the U.S.,
this would be something like the Nevada desert. Unless you have the kind they have in India or Pakistan, you cannot do it. The reason for this is that
the underground water system gets damaged. North Korea has a very abundant flow of underground water, and if you carry out an underground nuclear test
in this kind of place, radioactive materials would get into the water supply for the whole of the Korean peninsula, and also flow out into the Sea of
Japan. As a consequence, if there were any underground nuclear testing in the Korean peninsula, it would not be just the ecological system, but also
the topography of the land that would be damaged. So, will they indeed carry out tests? I think they might somehow manage to borrow the Pakistani
desert, or else carry out tests in another country. Still, this being North Korea, one can never know. If they did do that sort of nuclear test, then
the U.S. would run out of patience."
globalsecurity.org...
The test will happen.....................................................