N. Korean nuclear blast probably less powerful than hoped for: Yale scholar

Yonhap News ^ | 05/28/09 | Sam Kim

[TigerLikesRooster]

Which means they will have more tests. It would also serve their political purpose, too.

If we let this slide, we will have the third and the fourth.... Eventually followed by ones from S. Korea and Japan.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[Sam's Army]

Should we be surprised that someone from Yale thought it was “too small”?

[Onelifetogive]

North Korea apparently failed to achieve desired explosiveness in its second nuclear test...

We should drop in a nuke bunker-buster and show them what a big boom feels like.

[TigerLikesRooster]

N. Korea celebrates their 2nd nuclear test at a mass indoor rally.

[theDentist]

Too small.. well I gues we have nothing to worry about. Good thing Obama will make all things right, or we’d still have major cause of concern.

[MrB]

non-pc joke ahead, warning

“Wow, they DON’T all look alike...”

[Carley]

Sure!

not

[TigerLikesRooster]

Yes, I wonder what his motivation was.:-)

[silverleaf]

gee, what yield do they need to take out Seoul?

[CodeMasterPhilzar]

That’s what I’m thinking... Sounds like they’re floating trial balloons, trying to minimize the seriousness of the test. “Look, they failed, they have problems...” Making an excuse for doing nothing. obama is gutless.

[MrB]

100 tons, 10 tons, 1 ton...

It doesn’t matter what the yield is. Simply the fact that it IS a nuclear explosion is enough to get the desired effect.

[Nathan Zachary]

"It was too small," he wrote on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, referring to the explosion.

Using what he called standard conversions, Park, a geologist, said North Korea appears to have produced a force of 4 kilotons or less through the test that took place in the northeastern region.

It all depends on how much fuel they used and what the target blast size was, all things this guy doesn't know.

Perhaps they made a bigger blast than planned, using only a small amount of fuel for testing a 3 KT miniaturized weapon and achieved greater efficiency than expected.

I doubt they are gong to supply the world with the data, so we can only speculate. I'd expect the worst.
Making old fat boy type nukes doesn't make much sense and is a big waste of their limited nuclear fuel. They're most likely trying to build modern miniaturized nukes for short the range missile capability they have.

[MrB]

I’m sure 0bama or his advisors HAVE to know that “minimizing” the Norks efforts have a really bad cultural effect... they lose face, and they react.

If ‘bammy wants an analogy, it’d be like calling Al Sharpton “boy”.

[Nathan Zachary]

"We should drop in a nuke bunker-buster and show them what a big boom feels like."

Wouldn't that be embarrassing if our aging nuke failed to go off...

[gandalftb]

Well, this story is off the mark. This was not a Hiroshima type nuke, which was a gun-type uranium, the Little Boy. This was a plutonium implosion-type bomb, like Nagasaki. Why did the writer pick a geologist as their "expert" on nukes?

The yield was very small, about 20% of Nagasaki. It is now suspected that was intentional and in fact planned. They are simply trying to make a nuke small enough for transport by missile and don't care if the yield is low because of portability measures.

A 4 kilo yield air burst at 800 feet would flatten any downtown core.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Miniaturized nuke to be mounted on ICBM which can strike U.S. mainland is their ultimate goal. That is the way they can maximize their leverage against U.S.. Then against China, Russia, and Japan, too.

[TigerLikesRooster]

As a geologist, his knowledge on using nuke effectively or the nature of nuke is limited.

[Nathan Zachary]

"gee, what yield do they need to take out Seoul?"

None. They have enough conventional weapons pointed at it to do the job. One day, when the wind is blowing north west, Obama has to toss a few low yield nukes along the DMZ to take that arsenal out, but without creating much fallout. Otherize, if the North koreans fire first, Seoul is done.

[dfwgator]

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"