October 10, 2006
DID AIRBUS BUILD IT FOR THEM?:
U.S. doubts Korean test was nuclear (Bill Gertz, 10/10/06,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2006 7:38 AM
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
Oh boy. North Korea, with its record of civility and truthfulness, says it detonated a nuclear blast. U.S. Intelligence, with its record of competence and loyalty, says "on condition of anonymity" that they didn't.
It's a great day to be a conspiracy theorist.
Posted by: Peter B at October 10, 2006 8:18 AMWell said Peter. You and I have no clue what actually happened. Worse, one suspects the President doesn't either.
Posted by: curt at October 10, 2006 10:01 AMAmmonia Nitrate. Piles and piles of the stuff.
Posted by: jefferson park at October 10, 2006 10:41 AM20 million NorKs jumping up and down in unison.
Meanwhile in Washington, 20,000 CIA analysts scratch their heads in unison.
Posted by: lebeaux at October 10, 2006 12:21 PMBut seriously, the US has over 50 years of intense experience with stockpile stewardship (nuclear testing). We know the precise details of every aspect of a detonation, whether it is large, small, sub-critical, or a fizzle. It looks like the NorK test didn't initiate a chain reaction, i.e. failure. With a gun-type design that is really spectacularly incompetent. The gun-type design is so sure-fire that the US didn't even test it before using it on Japan. We did test implosion-type design at trinity. Apparently beating and starving your scientists doesn't make them smarter... go figure.
Posted by: lebeaux at October 10, 2006 12:32 PMThe gun-type of bomb (Little Boy) uses U235, which is relatively hard to get. It requires separation from U238 in huge cascades of centrifuges.
Plutonium is a lot easier to get (nuke plants generate it by the ton), but a bomb is harder to design. It requires an implosion with very carefully laid explosive charges to create a "lens" that hits the Pu shell at just the right force and velocity (Fat Man). If the lens is even slightly misaligned you get a fizzle.
Iran is currently building the centrifuges for separating U235. Much more dangerous because (as you indicated) any idiot can blow up a U235 bomb.
Posted by: Gideon at October 10, 2006 1:40 PMjefferson:
And ammonium nitrate is fertilizer! Just think of it, hundreds of tons of that blown up inside a mountain in a country undergoing full-scale famine... the mind boggles.
"It looks like the NorK test didn't initiate a chain reaction, i.e. failure."
"White House spokesman Tony Snow said today it would take more time, possibly days, to come to a conclusion, and that there was a "remote possibility that we'll never know."
Posted by: curt at October 10, 2006 2:13 PM