North Korea conducts nuclear test?

[Urwumpe]

I wouldn't call the NK army poor, they do have skills and discipline. They are just under normal circumstances no match for a western army. They need Chinese protection, and when China drops them, they are lost. Which is the reason why they want "wonder weapons" like the nuclear bomb. A single nuclear bomb on Seoul or Tokio could cause more damage in seconds then the NK military cause cause by conventional means in years. Militarily, perfectly useless. 12 nukes wouldn't stop a army. But politically...

 

[MJR]

Just as I was saying. They need China to pick them off their feet and if it wasn't for them then the Korean peninsula would just be Korea. Politically, it just puts a fear into everyone's mind. They know that it will fool us because nobody wants nuclear war, but they want to feel like a real country that they cannot be.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University, believes that the latest North Korean nuke test was a fizzle:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/relax-the-north-korean-nuke-was-another-dud/

Converting measured earthquake magnitude to explosive yield depends on knowledge of the geology of the test site, which, not surprisingly, the North Koreans have not provided. But we can make some educated estimates. In my judgment, the May 25 bomb was about 3.5 times as powerful as the 2006 device. The general expert opinion, which I share, was that the 2006 bomb had a yield between 0.1 and 0.8 kilotons, so the most recent explosion was between 0.4 and 2.8 kilotons. (My own guess is on the lower end of this range.) Yale geologist Jeffrey Park has reached a similar conclusion.

 

[Urwumpe]

This also fits to the calculations on the Arms Control Wonk blog.

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2314/more-dprk-stuff

 

[MJR]

So they think it was an earthquake because of the seismic activity?

 

[Urwumpe]

So they think it was an earthquake because of the seismic activity?

No, it was a man-made explosion. Explosions appear suddenly in seismic activity plots, Earthquakes brew for a short moment before reaching full strength.

A "fizzle" is a failed nuclear explosion, that, while exploding and producing lots of radiation, does not reach full explosion strength. This is because the warhead disintegrated and lost the critical density, before turning most of the radioactive material into energy. This is a critical design error and can be caused by many factors, for example inadequate quality of the explosive lenses for Plutonium bombs, but also lack of tamper material or suboptimal warhead shape.

 

[MJR]

How are nuclear bombs so deadly even though they can be similar in size to other less leathal bombs? Is it because of the nuclear fusion and the unstable elements?

 

[Urwumpe]

How are nuclear bombs so deadly even though they can be similar in size to other less leathal bombs? Is it because of the nuclear fusion and the unstable elements?

All nuclear processes dealing with binding energy of the atoms (fission and fusion) can release much more energy than any chemical reaction.

The trick is not that the nuclear fuel is instable (that is sometimes just an inevitable evil), but that if you split the atoms into two, the two new atoms require less energy for being held together than the initial plutonium or uranium atom. This works more or less well until having iron or lighter atoms. From iron on, fission (Which is still possible) results in energy being absorbed instead of being produced.

 

[insane_alien]

to add to what urwumpe said, there are fusion bombs(H-bombs) as well as fission type devices, North Korea is not capable of producing a fusion based weapon yet.

Fusion devices wourk by having 2 stages, the first is a fission type nuclear bomb, this only does a small part of the explosive force its primary purpose is to compress a small amount of hydrogen gas(about as much as you'd need to fill a party balloon) until it fuzes to make helium. on and event by event basis this doesn't produce as much energy as a fission device but it does produce much more energy on a mass by mass basis( 1000 fusions produces less than 1000 fissions but 1kg of fusion fuel produces more energy than 1kg of fission fuel). there is no critical mass for fusion that can be achieved on earth(you need a ball of gas a few times the size of jupiter) so the bomb can be expanded to any arbitrary yield.

there is also a three stage bomb which can be even more powerful, a fission-fusion-fission bomb(the tsar bomba is believed to have been of this design) where the first two stages are as a typical hydrogen bomb but the tamper is made of U-238 which under the intense flux of neutrons from the fusion undergoes a massive amount of fission which adds even more enrgy to the explosion.

theoretically, there is no limit to the number of stages or fission-fusion cycles. but you'd be crazy to want to do this as multiple small warheads are much better than one large warhead.

 

[Andy44]

Hmm...now that's an idea: why doesn't the US give NK the space shuttle program, hardware and all. NK will waste so much money on it they will collapse, just like the USSR did after Buran!

Actually, "after" does not necessarily mean "because of". Typically, military expenses soak up much more funds than any space programme. And even having them high wasn't the only reason for the USSR's collapse. Don't also forget that North Korea and the USSR have always been totally different countries... Drawing parallels won't help to predict anything here.

It was a joke, a shot at the STS.

 

[willy88]

Don't also forget that North Korea and the USSR have always been totally different countries... Drawing parallels won't help to predict anything here.

North Korea:
​

USSR:
​

More or less.

 

[razgriz31m]

atleast they tried and succeeded what the americans thought to be almost impossible.

 

[MJR]

I don't think that anybody would agree with that. Communism is the least successible government in the world and they are their own little world. We never had a doubt that this was possible we just didn't want it to happen.

 

[Hielor]

atleast they tried and succeeded what the americans thought to be almost impossible.

Um, what? If anything, they proved that communism doesn't work.

I don't think that anybody would agree with that. Communism is the least successible government in the world and they are their own little world. We never had a doubt that this was possible we just didn't want it to happen.

"Successible"?

And communism, like anarchy, is not possible when the population of the country are imperfect (as all humans are). It works well in an ideal world or a society of robots--notsomuch in reality.

 

[Andy44]

atleast they tried and succeeded what the americans thought to be almost impossible.

Tried and succeeded at what?

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't think that anybody would agree with that. Communism is the least successible government in the world and they are their own little world. We never had a doubt that this was possible we just didn't want it to happen.

But North Korea is not communist. Their government style is called Juche - by the name of the state religion around the ruling family.

 

[SiberianTiger]

But North Korea is not communist. Their government style is called Juche - by the name of the state religion around the ruling family.

The three principles of Juche are:

• "independence in politics" (chaju)
• "self-sustenance in the economy" (charip)
• "self-defense in national defense" (chawi)

 

[MJR]

The three principles of Juche are:

• "independence in politics" (chaju)
• "self-sustenance in the economy" (charip)
• "self-defense in national defense" (chawi)

As loyal as Juche sounds they don't give a good name for it. Independence in politics is a bad choice that they made because that made them more of an exile in the world. Talking about self-sustenance for their economy, nice job they did. Their economy is horrible and they are one of the most poorest countries in the world when it comes to that. They have a centrally planned economy that has very few small businesses, it goes through too many changes, and they feel that that makes them powerful. All they care about is the leaders, in this case family. They don't care about the citizens or anything like that.

 

[tblaxland]

its primary purpose is to compress a small amount of hydrogen gas

Lithium deuteride normally (see here). Hydrogen gas is a very difficult substance to store reliably and not the sort of thing you want in a bomb that is likely to be stored long term.

 

[SiberianTiger]

They have eventually done it. Two Americans are sentenced for 12 years of labor camps in North Korea:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...HELD?SITE=NCWIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT