Matt Drudge is so easy to hate… and yet, sometimes, you can’t help but love him… like when he puts an image of the Team America: World Police puppet version of Kim Jong Il on his homepage…
LOL! (Or, should I say, “ROR”? “I’m so ronery…”)
Anyway, what Drudge is headlining directly above that hilarious picture is this supposed scoop:
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday, Washington Times star reporter Bill Gertz is set to report in Tuesday editions.
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.
In other words, if I’m understanding that right, the non-nuclear “detonator” went off, but the nuclear part didn’t fire. Hmm. I wonder, is that really more plausible than the “it was a non-nuclear hoax” theory? I mean, wouldn’t 550-800 tons be a whole lot of conventional explosives to use as a mere detonator for a relatively small nuclear device? Even assuming it was supposed to be a Nagasaki-sized (~20 kiloton) bomb? Can you really get the equivalent of a 4.2 (or 3.58) magnitude earthquake from the mere act of, in essence, lighting the fuse on an atomic bomb? Granted, I don’t know what I’m talking about, so I could be totally wrong, but it just seems kinda fishy to me. Maybe someone who knows more about such things can weigh in…
Anyway, Drudge goes on to quote, uh, somebody, as saying: “There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn’t clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives.” Well, that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the non-nuclear theory; sounds more like a “wait and see.”
There’s nothing yet on the Washington Times website.
UPDATE: Here’s the article. Money quote: Gertz’s source “said that so far, ‘it appears there was more fizz than pop.’”
Gertz explains that “[a] successful nuclear detonation requires a properly timed and triggered conventional blast that splits atoms, setting off the nuclear chain reaction that produces the massive explosions associated with atomic bombs.” That’s all well and good, but my question is, again, is it reasonable to expect the “properly timed and triggered conventional blast” to itself be so massive that it produces a 3.6-4.2 magnitude tremor? Does it take 550-800 tons of conventional explosives to “set off the nuclear chain reaction”? Seriously, does anyone know?
Also: if it those numbers do make sense — and if indeed that’s what happened, a conventional blast followed by a nuclear dud — what, if anything, does that tell us about the size of nuclear bomb they were trying to set off?
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Categories: North Korea, Misc. Funny Stuff
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October 10th, 2006 at 12:39:20 am
Seems fishy to me too.
October 10th, 2006 at 1:10:14 am
You’re just saying that because it’s in the Washington Times. :P
October 10th, 2006 at 1:59:05 am
Hey, I resemble that remark! ;)
October 10th, 2006 at 3:09:30 am
It does not take that much conventional explosive to make a nuke go boom. I don’t know how much it takes, but it’s less than 500 TONS (a million pounds) of TNT.
It could have been a hoax - make a big pile of TNT (the Norks have that) and blow it up.
It could have been a small device - they don’t have (I hope) all that much fissile material. Maybe they made a little one to make sure they had it right.
They could have screwed up. Getting the geometry of the thing wrong might (I’m not so sure about this part) cause a partial detonation. You’ve got to cram all the boom-stuff into a small space at once to get critical mass.
It could have been a trigger for a bigger bomb.
Anyway, I’m pretty happy that China called us when they were warned, to tell us about it.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:11:17 am
Brendan,
Echoing what Doc said, it actually requires not much conventional explosives at all to cause a nuclear detonation (i.e., split an atom). But the explosives are not designed to explode outwards. They are designed to explode inwards. An implosion.
What you have is a sphere of explosives with plutonium or some other weaponized material in the center. The key is when detonated, the explosives form a constructed implosion that crushes the material in the center, causing the atoms to split.
Problem is making that implosion. Its very precise and very geometric and even the slightest flaw in the sphere can cause a fizzle.
So frankly, if it registered on the richter scale, it was either a successful test or he dumped a bunch of explosives underground and blew them. And the more I read and here, I’m thinking option B is more and more plausible.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:26:07 am
The problem with the “hoax” theory is that we’d know if the NorKs were bringing tons and tons of TNT to the site, because we have satellites watching the whole country. Hard to sneak that much explosive in without us noticing.
Steven Den Beste at Chizumatic has a couple of very good posts on this. He suspects that they might have messed up their plutonium breeding cycle and gotten too many other isotopes of plutonium mixed in with their Pu-239. Worth reading. You’ll have to scroll down because he doesn’t have permalinks.
October 10th, 2006 at 12:45:25 pm
Kinda like Clyde is saying, the concepts behind a nuclear bomb are fairly distributed and not hard to gather at all.
The actual creation of said bomb is VERY tricky. The plutonium has to be pure or refined to pure which involves a very high degree of precision chemistry and physics. The explosive sphere has to be perfect within a very small margin of error requiring precise manufacturing. You get where I’m going here…
Precision and professional capabilities that may just be out of NK’s range. That’s not to say they can’t get it, but even if they have radioactive material, its not easy-peasy throwing it together with a fuse.
October 10th, 2006 at 4:17:23 pm
“It does not take that much conventional explosive to make a nuke go boom. I don’t know how much it takes, but it’s less than 500 TONS (a million pounds) of TNT.”
“Echoing what Doc said, it actually requires not much conventional explosives at all to cause a nuclear detonation (i.e., split an atom).”
Yes, Doc & Lojo [and Brendan :] and that’s a damn shame, too, if ya think about it. Because, if only it DID require a million-pound Trigger mechanism, it might be just a wee bit harder to Cram the whole demonic contraption into a Nosecone or a Bomb Bay and then achieve powered Flight. ;> And your freelance atomic Terrorists might face a bigger challenge too. Just imagine the size of the Suitcase. :> (Assuming such weighty cargo didn’t send the Container Ship to Davey Jones long before she hove in view at the Port of Los Angeles, arrr. :}
October 10th, 2006 at 4:49:29 pm
Loy the Elder -
Technology marches on.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:08:25 pm
It takes a huge amount of conventional or atomic explosion to get a plutonium bomb going, but to my knowledge, uranium bombs are much simpler. And the really devastating bombs are thermonuclear devices, in which a fission explosion is used to trip a fusion explosion, if I remember correctly.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:14:55 am
But reportedly (? ~ per the Cable Newsies anyway) this one WAS Plutonium. / Fission-only of course, not fusion (aka “the HYDROGEN bomb, Dimitri!” :)
October 11th, 2006 at 9:40:37 am
While there are people out there who want to claim that building a nuke is easy, it’s not. The bomb has to have an almost perfectly controlled conventional explosion to make the Plutonium or Uranium achieve fusion correctly. It is entirely possible that the North Koreans, with their pre-industrial age technology base, are simply incapable of doing this.