North Korea's Test Not a Dud?

Although the explosion of North Korea's first nuke was alot smaller than most had anticipated, has anyone considered the possibility that they tested something alot smaller, like -oh, I dont know--- maybe a suitcase nuke?

You know, not something that is going to take out an entire city. Just 10 or 15 blocks, thats all.

Just wondering, since the media seemed to play it off like it was alot smaller, and hence a "dud".

...hmmm...

[edit on 20-10-2006 by spliff4020]

Originally posted by spliff4020

anticipated, has anyone considered the possibility that they tested something alot smaller, like -oh, I dont know--- maybe a suitcase nuke?

...hmmm...

[edit on 20-10-2006 by spliff4020]

Yes. I wondered that too. All the suitcase nukes are still somewhere out in the world and no one knows where.

So could NK's thought had been, why not fire a suitcase nuke to show the world we have/master the nuclear technologie and you better never think of attacking us? (NK logic)

But in that case I don't get why they then plan to fire a second one..

The thing with nuclear weapons research is that the hard part is making it go bang.
Once you get one nuke to go off, making bigger nukes is easy (compairitively).

Playing down the size of the detonation is just sticking your head in the sand.

Kim is bluffing. Kim doesn't know how to make the things that go bang. He bought a couple of suitcase nukes on the black market. Blowing up one of those doesn't prove anything. It only proves that he might have gotten his hands on some suitcase nukes. He doesn't know how to make them.

Do you have any sort of proof to back that claim up?

Sounds like denial to me...

Originally posted by BitRaiser

Do you have any sort of proof to back that claim up?

Proof? Kim has so far shown the world no more than a mini nuclear explosion. The chance that North Korea has produced a mini atomic bomb is less likely than Kim buying a suitcase nuke on the black market.

How long has North Korea had a nuclear weapons development project?
How long did it take for the Manhaten Project to produce a bomb?

I see no reason why anyone could be rationally skeptical about that test.

I mean, sure... I could think up some ways that the test could have been faked.
10K tones of TNT with a couple tones of Yellowcake stacked on top would likely produce the same telltail radioactive emmissions that were picked up. Much cheaper than wasting a briefcase bomb (those suckers must be stupidly expensive).

Still, if you apply a little rational thought to the issue, it's much more likely that they did, infact, touch off their own homegrown (and slightly under-ripe) nuke.

CNN said they might used plutonium for their nuke instead of uranium. So it's not as powerful.

The smallness of the blast really isn't a great mystery.

It could have just been a small nuke, hedging their bets since they'd never touched one off before. It could have been misalined, causing an incomplete reaction. It could have been lowgrade nuclear matiral. It could have been (as you say) plutonium instead of uranium.

The bottom line is that they made a nuclear bang. Once you've got that far, the rest of the development is more or less just tweaking the tech.

Another possibility and one that was reported by NEIN earlier in the week is that the test was actually a test of the first stage of a hydrogen device. Hydrogen bombs use a sub-kiloton atomic device to trigger the hydrogen stage. The fact that NK was planning additional tests also played into this although CNN is reporting that they are backing-off additional tests due to pressure form China.

Originally posted by BitRaiser
The smallness of the blast really isn't a great mystery.

It could have just been a small nuke, hedging their bets since they'd never touched one off before.

According to this website: nuclearweaponarchive.org... , the test was originally designed as a 4 kiloton device; "On the morning of 9 October 2006 North Korea informed the Chinese government that they should expect a four kiloton nuclear test."

Originally posted by BitRaiser
It could have been lowgrade nuclear matiral.

From the same article; "The North Koreans have high grade plutonium (content of neutron emitting Pu-240 measured at 2.44% by the IAEA in the July 1992, compared to 6% for U.S. weapons plutonium)"

Originally posted by BitRaiser
It could have been (as you say) plutonium instead of uranium.

It was plutonium, as are all modern bombs and indeed all bombs since the Hiroshima bomb. I believe South Africa is the only nation to have constructed a uranium bomb since Little Boy and the Trinity Device (can't find my source on that, but it's out there somewhere), although uranium is sometimes mixed with plutonium in implosion bombs. Plutonium bombs are more difficult to design (hence the problem with the yield in the NK test), but if done correctly are more stable and provide bigger yields. The wikki page on nuclear weapon design is quite well done:

en.wikipedia.org...

In any case, I don't agree with the original posters hypothesis that this was a suitcase bomb. The relative smallness of the blast was due to problems perfecting the complicated implosion method of detonation, and possibly a desire to conserve their limited supply of weapons grade Plutonium

edit: my mistake, Operation Upshot-Knothole used a pure uranium design in nuclear shells www.youtube.com...



[edit on 20-10-2006 by sonicology]

Originally posted by g210b


Yes. I wondered that too. All the suitcase nukes are still somewhere out in the world and no one knows where.

So could NK's thought had been, why not fire a suitcase nuke to show the world we have/master the nuclear technologie and you better never think of attacking us? (NK logic)

But in that case I don't get why they then plan to fire a second one..

I was thinking that maybe it was a sales pitch to the prospective buyer (whomever it might be) but a demostration none the less. I dont think that he would plan on using it, just selling it.