View Full Version : North Korea Nuke TEST !!!!
Unconfirmed reports state, that North Korea has test fired a Nuke.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=PASUN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Update....
As of 2135 MDT, the USGS in Golden CO, states that they have some seismic activity coming in from the North Korean A/O.....as per FOX news.
The test measured 3.58 magnitude.
This is great news...I really missed the REDs and the arms race. :rolleyes: This ought to mean a big budget increase for the ol' Air Force...:munchin
Duck and cover!!!
FOX is now saying that a senior Bush offical () says that NK did indeed fire off a Nuke, but that they (the NKs) wanted the device to be at least a 400 kilo-ton blast, but due to information coming out, it was well below that.
This is great news...I really missed the REDs and the arms race. :rolleyes: This ought to mean a big budget increase for the ol' Air Force...:munchin
Duck and cover!!!
What?
Sarcasm brother...sarcasm....
We should Arc Light AQ Khan's house right now.
Could have banked a deal with the Chinese years ago, we’d drop our defense guarantee of Taiwan, the Norks suddenly move from an asset to a liability for Beijing. Wam-Bam, they’d be making flat-screens and stitching Nike’s in Pyongyang right now. Now we have to divert more assets from smoking out the GSJ to contain (or take out) this asshole.
x SF med
10-09-2006, 06:29
I didn't think you were supposed to microwave Kimchi - NK went about it the hard way too....
Ok, now we are positive they have the tech for the warhead - they have had issues wit hdelivery vehicles - if we can just talk them into putting a working warhead onto one of their non working rockets, they'd take care of themselves.
Who's to say they've not ditched the rockets and are going for artillery?:munchin
Interesting article from the London Times Online:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2393599,00.html
China on alert over a nuclear neighbour
"The sense that Kim’s regime is losing control lies behind the Chinese military buildup. But some South Korean MPs fear China could grab territory from the north in the event of a collapse."
GreenSalsa
10-09-2006, 14:05
The “weapon” was detonated in a remote site, with NO outside observers…
There was NO “cratering” and NO radioactivity detected at the site… (admittedly it could take as long as a year for those gasses to escape)
Finally, the weapon was only estimated at 550 tons… (VERY small nuke, only 10% of what the Hiroshima bomb was in 1945)
Just a wild guess, but if you have a crappy hand in poker, you bluff…
I would bet money he “faked” a nuke demonstration for the attention, and the inevitable aid that would come if he were to “stop” further testing—besides who will call his bluff?
What do you guys think?
:munchin
The “weapon” was detonated in a remote site, with NO outside observers…
There was NO “cratering” and NO radioactivity detected at the site… (admittedly it could take as long as a year for those gasses to escape)
Finally, the weapon was only estimated at 550 tons… (VERY small nuke, only 10% of what the Hiroshima bomb was in 1945)
Just a wild guess, but if you have a crappy hand in poker, you bluff…
I would bet money he “faked” a nuke demonstration for the attention, and the inevitable aid that would come if he were to “stop” further testing—besides who will call his bluff?
What do you guys think?
:munchin
That theory is being bandied about, on the news talk shows and other BBS Blogs.
You can never tell with this guy, Lil' Kim.
Although, it's also being reported that SK Intel has been noticing movement up in the test area, for the possibility of another test fire.
The NK's were/are saying that they wanted their device to be up in the 400 kilo-ton range and they just got a 550 ton blast. Could it just be loads of TNT/HE explosives or could their device have just been a "fizzle"?
Personally, I think the Chicoms know a lot more of what is going on there than we do, and we need to start pressuring them.
BTW....G.S. Congrats on the Promotion, Sir.
Jack Moroney (RIP)
10-09-2006, 14:33
What do you guys think?:munchin
Good possibility, but as stated on another post, with this maniac I would be more concerned with this being the validation of a Small Atomic Demolition Munition type device for sale to those who are seeking paradise and don't mind hand delivering such systems to critical notes.
Aoresteen
10-09-2006, 15:13
If the test is a fake, we should know. 550 tons of TNT is 1,100,000 pounds of explosive. That's a lot of truck loads anyway you figure it.
My guess is that we are looking at satellite data right now to see if there was significant truck activity in the past month in the test area.
Kind of hard to hide that kind of activity in a remote area; we must have been watching.
uboat509
10-10-2006, 07:29
Just found this at SWJ. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061009-115158-2477r.htm
SFC W
The Reaper
10-10-2006, 16:16
My question would be how low could you go in yield and still have a successful detonation of a nuclear fission weapon?
It would seem to me that the threshold has always been several KT except for very advanced selective yield weapons.
Is .5 KT realistic from a fission reaction detonation?
TR
Is .5 KT realistic from a fission reaction detonation?
TR
I think .5 KT is realistic for a fission device. Why would they intentionally go that low when they could use the material more efficiency though? It’s not like we’re in the 40’s learning the physics as we go. The information is out there.
Here are a few reasons I can think of for the low yield.
1) They wanted to gather containment information from a low yield test before moving on to higher yields. Containment isn’t as simple as some believe and venting nasty stuff would really stir up the hornets nest.
2) Their design isn’t very sophisticated and they didn’t want to invest a lot of material on the first test. I imagine they learned something from the test that they can use to mature the design.
3) Maybe they just wanted to make a bang to prove they could. In which case they would probably go with something simple that was sure to work.
4) They are attempting to design a device that is as light as possible so they can weaponize it on a missile or other means. Fat Man and Little boy weren’t exactly light and small. With a simple design they would have to sacrifice yield for a reduction in weight and volume.
5) Perhaps they believe .5 KT is a large enough yield for them. After all, what's the point in destroying the enemy with a nuclear blast if you'll kill half your country with the fallout?
All that said I’m more inclined to think they didn’t intend to get .5 KT. I think they don’t fully understand the nuclear physics and/or the shock physics involved and the device was a “dud”. If you want to scare or impress someone you make the biggest bang you can. When people are questioning if it was even a nuclear test you didn’t really impress anyone. It would be awesome if they prove they faked it though.
Agree/Disagree? :munchin
The lack of a secondary explosion leads me to believe that they just stuffed a bunch of explosives under ground and set it off, with the full knowledge that an underground explosion would be much harder to verify as nuclear.
I didn't see the seismograph data, but there should be a little tick before the reaction, representing the catalytic explosion.
Also, underground nuclear testing leaves subsidense craters, which one could measure (at a given depth and ground material) and determine the yield of the device. Notice in the picture (of the Nevada nuclear test site) the many circles, which were tested from 100m-500m deep IIRC.
The Reaper
10-11-2006, 16:44
I think .5 KT is realistic for a fission device. Why would they intentionally go that low when they could use the material more efficiency though? It’s not like we’re in the 40’s learning the physics as we go. The information is out there.
Here are a few reasons I can think of for the low yield.
1) They wanted to gather containment information from a low yield test before moving on to higher yields. Containment isn’t as simple as some believe and venting nasty stuff would really stir up the hornets nest.
2) Their design isn’t very sophisticated and they didn’t want to invest a lot of material on the first test. I imagine they learned something from the test that they can use to mature the design.
3) Maybe they just wanted to make a bang to prove they could. In which case they would probably go with something simple that was sure to work.
4) They are attempting to design a device that is as light as possible so they can weaponize it on a missile or other means. Fat Man and Little boy weren’t exactly light and small. With a simple design they would have to sacrifice yield for a reduction in weight and volume.
5) Perhaps they believe .5 KT is a large enough yield for them. After all, what's the point in destroying the enemy with a nuclear blast if you'll kill half your country with the fallout?
All that said I’m more inclined to think they didn’t intend to get .5 KT. I think they don’t fully understand the nuclear physics and/or the shock physics involved and the device was a “dud”. If you want to scare or impress someone you make the biggest bang you can. When people are questioning if it was even a nuclear test you didn’t really impress anyone. It would be awesome if they prove they faked it though.
Agree/Disagree? :munchin
I see no flaws with your logic and agree that the NK psychology would have demanded the biggest boom possible.
Could they have gotten less than satisfactory fissionable material or it have decayed more than they realized?
See, I knew that your expertise would come in handy eventually.:D
TR
Alchemist
10-12-2006, 13:33
The Reaper:
Could they have gotten less than satisfactory fissionable material or it have decayed more than they realized?
This is pure speculation, sir, and assumes that if this test wasn't a straight-out hoax it involved the plutonium we knew they were isolating from spent nuclear reactor fuel rods.
When U-238 (nonfissionable under reactor conditions) absorbs one neutron, it decays over several days to plutonium-239. Under a high neutron flux or long exposure, it can capture several neutrons before decaying to plutonium, so you get heavier isotopes. Pu-240 decays partly by spontaneous fission, and plutonium that contains too much of it will "predetonate", i.e. fizzle and blow itself apart before a really good chain reaction gets going. Pu-241 is also fissionable but also undesirable compared to -239.
You can never totally avoid forming these heavier isotopes, but if you start the chemical separation of Pu after only a small fraction of uranium has been converted, you rely on statistics to keep them to a minimum: If most of your uranium hasn't even captured one neutron, what are the odds that any given atom will have captured two? Nonzero, but small.
If the North Koreans were rushing the process, or if they got greedy and tried to squeeze as much plutonium as possible out of a given reactor cycle, the product could have been too low-quality for a proper detonation. With a fizzle yield, essentially a failure, you could get a burst of energy and a huge mess of radioisotopes, but the blast equivalent could be as low as tens of tons of TNT.
Again, speculation. I think it's likelier that they got a poor result from what was supposed to be a regular-sized blast, than that they're already working on deliberate low-yield devices, but then I'm just a fool chemist.
The Reaper
10-12-2006, 19:47
Excellent explanation, Professor, thank you very much.
We should know soon when the emitted radiation reports from the detectors come in whether it was a fizzle or a complete fraud.
I am enjoying the laughable NK threats, given the relative numbers of weapons and delivery vehicles they and we posess, even if theirs actually worked for a change. Makes me think that there might be a lot of replacement rocket scientists and nuclear weapons designers in working in NK in the near future.
The reluctance of the Chinese to support strong sanctions is surprising to me, since the N Koreans essentially told them to piss off and did what they wanted. We must be holding the Japanese in check, or I believe they will throw the trump card and say that they must develop their own nuclear weapons program. With their current reactors and stockpile of materials, as well as their advanced technology (especially missiles and space programs), they could be a large strategic player in the theater in very short order. This would cause the Chinese no end of trouble, as they are historically enemies.
If I were the US and Japanese negotiators, I would be hinting very strongly at this possibility to the Chinese and NKs.
What the heck do I know though. Just my .02.
TR
Pu-240 decays partly by spontaneous fission, and plutonium that contains too much of it will "predetonate", i.e. fizzle and blow itself apart before a really good chain reaction gets going.
Good post Alchemist.
Here is a little history fact related to this. Pre-initiation was a concern for us with the Fat Man design. Oppenheimer concluded that there was about a 6% chance that its yield would be less then 5 KT and a 2% chance it would be under 1 KT. That was for an expected 20 KT yield and with supposedly pretty pure stuff. I’m glad we were lucky...perhaps NK wasn't.:p
Here is an interesting link on the subject of using reactor grade Pu (like what NK may have) in a weapon. It gives some hard numbers and pretty graphs.
http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/4_1Mark.pdf
I think NK has the capability to make weapons grade Pu. They have a uranium mine, fuel production plant, ~25 MWt "research" reactor, and a reprocessing plant. That's a pretty good setup for making weapons grade Pu. The question is if they have had time to make and reprocess weapons grade Pu if the 8000 spent fuel rods they extracted in 2003 didn't make the grade. I’m not sure.
If they didn’t have time and the fuel they reprocessed was low quality then TR’s suggestion is probably the most likely reason for the low yield in my opinion. Assuming of coarse it wasn’t intentional. If they had high quality Pu then I’d say the low yield was either explosives assembly or a manufacturing related problem. The physicist can design the perfect gadget but someone has to build it.
Everyone who knows how to accurately machine Pu please raise your hand…:D
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220537,00.html
U.S. Officials: No Radioactivity Detected on Korean Peninsula
I stand by my original prediction, cautiously.
This question goes out to Nuke or Alchemist (or anyone in the know): could the DPRK have "doped" some soil near "ground zero" with their reactor grade fuel to make it appear to our sniffers that their device went critical (or pre-ignited)?
Alchemist
10-15-2006, 21:22
The Reaper: Thank you, sir. Interesting comments on potential diplomatic ramifications.
Nuke: Thank you too, and that's a great paper you linked, I'm glad to have those numbers. "Everyone who knows how to accurately machine Pu...." [Shudder.] You probably know (hence the :D?) that a milligram of the stuff can kill you outright through just plain chemical toxicity.
Maytime: I saw that report, and began to think it was a hoax after all. But did you see this, the next day?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220737,00.html
An air sampling taken after North Korea's claimed nuclear test detected gaseous radioactive debris consistent with an atomic explosion...officials said Friday night. They said no final determination had been made....
Which reminded me of your question:
could the DPRK have "doped" some soil near "ground zero" with their reactor grade fuel to make it appear to our sniffers that their device went critical (or pre-ignited)?
They could certainly blow radioisotopes sky-high by salting a large conventional device with them, but I think it would be difficult to fake the correct mixture. To get the right balance of plutonium-derived fission products, plus unconsumed plutonium (no explosion is perfectly efficient), you'd pretty well have to have achieved the nuclear explosion you're trying to fake. I have to imagine that after all our own testing and sampling we could tell the difference.
I'm no expert on this subject, and your prediction could be right, but my guess is that the guys who have access to the data will know, one way or the other, if they don't already.
"Everyone who knows how to accurately machine Pu...." [Shudder.] You probably know (hence the :D?) that a milligram of the stuff can kill you outright through just plain chemical toxicity.
I will neither confirm nor deny ever machining Pu...I'm just kidding. No, I've never had the privilege of machining Pu. I mention it because I don't think it would be an easy task especially in NK's case. They don't have a whole lot of material to practice on and I'm not sure their well known for their high tolerance manufacturing capabilities.
I had a post I was working on for this subject but it was defiantly overboard for what I think most people are looking for. So, here are the basics from what I remember from my Effect of Nuclear Weapons class. (Caution: It’s been awhile)
There are three sources of residual ionizing radiation that contribute to fallout in a weapon: fission products, unfissioned nuclear material, and neutron-induced activity. The gases that escape from an underground test will have isotope ratios that will vary with time as they fallout or decay. Typically, the first particles to fall out will be depleted in krypton, xenon (important one in our case), and of coarse their daughter products. Lingering particles will have rubidium, cesium, and their daughter products as well. In terms of long term health worries, strontium-90 and cesium-137 top the list.
When you change the design of the device or the environment it’s tested the ionizing radiation balance will vary and so will the ratios of isotopes produced. By comparing the ratios of isotopes from a test they should be able to tell if it was truly a nuclear test, if it was a good test or a dud, and possibly get some insights into its design
Faking it for them would be difficult I think. Some of the isotopes are short lived and numerous (300+). You wouldn't have to do them all but a bunch of them. Also some would be almost impossible for them to even make. These are called higher actinides or minor actinides. These may be in small quantities, fallout quickly, and/or have short half-lives so they may not even play a role in our case. I don't remember.
The picture linked below gives an example of how the mixture of isotopes change with time. Again, there are some 300+ different isotopes formed in a nuclear explosion but it shows some of the main ones.
http://www.answers.com/topic/bombfalloutisotopicsig-jpg
I think this is pretty much in line with what Alchemist said. Take this with a grain a salt though, I'm an Engineer not a Physicist.:cool:
Short of taking a core sample, I think the best way to verify a test would be to test the water. It seems they have already verified it was a nuke test with air samples so there may not be a point now. Besides, I wonder how hard it would be to get a water sample over there.
If someone is really interested in the nitty gritty details of Nuclear Weapons Effects PM me and I'll send you a link to some books on the subject. Their unclassified but I'd rather not post a general link to them.
Yeah, this was the short version. Now I need to go PT some more. :lifter
The Reaper
10-16-2006, 18:26
Thanks, Nuke. Good detailed info.
IIRC, there is an excellent open-source write-up on machining PU and bombmaking in a Tom Clancy novel, which also fizzles.
TR
CoLawman
10-16-2006, 18:58
It occurred to me after reading Nuke's post.........There are really really some quality people currently in and currently heading to the pipeline.
The Reaper
10-21-2006, 08:29
What a coincidence.:rolleyes:
TR
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/world_war_ii_is_over.html
October 20, 2006
Allow Japanese Nukes
By Charles Krauthammer
The first stop on Condoleezza Rice's post-detonation, nuclear reassurance tour was Tokyo. There she dutifully unfurled the American nuclear umbrella, pledging in person that the United States would meet any North Korean attack on Japan with massive American retaliation, nuclear if necessary.
An important message, to be sure, for the short run, lest Kim Jong Il imbibe a little too much cognac and be teased by one of his "pleasure squad" lovelies into launching a missile or two into Japan.
But Rice's declaration had another and obvious longer-run intent: to quell any thought Japan might have of going nuclear to counter and deter North Korea's bomb.
The Japanese understood this purpose well. Thus, at a joint news conference with Rice, Foreign Minister Taro Aso offered the boilerplate denial of even thinking of going nuclear: "The government of Japan has no position at all to consider going nuclear."
The impeccably polite Japanese were not about to contradict the secretary of state in her presence. Nonetheless, the very same Aso had earlier the very same day told a parliamentary committee that Japan should begin debating the issue: "The reality is that it is only Japan that has not discussed possessing nuclear weapons, and all other countries have been discussing it."
Just three days earlier, another high-ranking member of the ruling party had transgressed the same taboo and called for open debate about Japan's acquiring nuclear weapons.
The American reaction to such talk is knee-jerk opposition. Like those imperial Japanese soldiers discovered holed up on some godforsaken Pacific island decades after World War II, we continue to act as if we, too, never received news of the Japanese surrender. We applaud the Japanese for continuing their adherence to the MacArthur constitution that forever denies Japan the status of Great Power replete with commensurate military force.
Of course Japan has in recent decades skirted that proscription, building a small but serious conventional military. Nuclear weapons, however, have remained off the table.
As the only country ever to suffer nuclear attack, Japan obviously has its own reasons to resist the very thought. But now that the lunatic regime next door, which has already overflown Japan with its missiles, has officially gone nuclear, some rethinking is warranted.
Japan is a true anomaly. All the other Great Powers went nuclear decades ago -- even the once-and-no-longer great, such as France; the wannabe great, such as India; and the never-will-be great, such as North Korea. There are nukes in the hands of Pakistan, which overnight could turn into an al-Qaeda state, and North Korea, a country so cosmically deranged that it reports that the "Dear Leader" shot five holes-in-one in his first time playing golf and also wrote six operas. Yet we are plagued by doubts about Japan's joining this club.
Japan is not just a model international citizen -- dynamic economy, stable democracy, self-effacing foreign policy -- it is also the most important and reliable U.S. ally after only Britain. One of the quieter success stories of recent American foreign policy has been the intensification of the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Tokyo has joined with the United States in the development and deployment of missile defenses and aligned itself with the United States on the neuralgic issue of Taiwan, pledging solidarity should there ever be a confrontation.
The immediate effect of Japan's considering going nuclear would be to concentrate China's mind on denuclearizing North Korea. China calculates that North Korea is a convenient buffer between it and a dynamic, capitalist South Korea bolstered by American troops. China is quite content with a client regime that is a thorn in our side, keeping us tied down while it pursues its ambitions in the rest of Asia. Pyongyang's nukes, after all, are pointed not west but east.
Japan's threatening to go nuclear would alter that calculation. It might even persuade China to squeeze Kim Jong Il as a way to prevent Japan from going nuclear. The Japan card remains the only one that carries even the remote possibility of reversing North Korea's nuclear program.
Japan's response to the North Korean threat has been very strong and very insistent on serious sanctions. This is, of course, out of self-interest, not altruism. But that is the point. Japan's natural interests parallel America's in the Pacific Rim -- maintaining military and political stability, peacefully containing an inexorably expanding China, opposing the gangster regime in Pyongyang, and spreading the liberal democratic model throughout Asia.
Why are we so intent on denying this stable, reliable, democratic ally the means to help us shoulder the burden in a world where so many other allies -- the inveterately appeasing South Koreans most notoriously -- insist on the free ride?