The North Korea Nuclear Test

It is now the day after and world opinion is starting to crystallize.

China condemns the test, appears to be backing sanctions, but calls military action unimaginable.

Japan calling for tough sanctions, considering a military response (maybe just a build-up).  Also considering a trade embargo of North Korea.

South Korea suspending aid.  Analysts are worried the may revive their decades old Nuke program.  Also reconsidering their policy of engagement with the North

US calling for inspection all cargo in and out of North Korea.

North Korea is threatening to fire a Nuclear tipped missile in response to sanctions.

Questions also remain on whether or not North Korea actually had a successful Nuclear Test.

New York Times - The North Korean test appears to have been a nuclear detonation but was fairly small by traditional standards, and possibly a failure or a partial success, federal and private analysts said yesterday...

A senior Bush administration official said he had learned through Asian contacts that the North Koreans had expected the detonation to have a force of about four kilotons. Because classified information was involved and there was lingering uncertainty, he would not let his name be used.

Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons design center in California, said the small size of the test signaled the possibility of what might be described as a partial success or a partial failure...

In Washington, intelligence officials said they were still in the early stages of evaluating the North Korean blast. But one said analysts had estimated its force at less than a kiloton.

“We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion,” said the intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information.

It will probably take several days to determine with confidence if the explosion was in fact nuclear, the official said. He added that so far, sensors had not detected radiation leaking from the blast site. But federal and private experts said it seemed unlikely that the North Koreans had faked an underground nuclear blast with a large pile of conventional high explosives...

Dr. Coyle, the former director of nuclear testing at Livermore, said small tests were more likely to leak radioactivity than large ones, because the intense heat and gigantic shock waves of bigger blasts tended to melt and pulverize nearby rock into impregnable barriers.

Experts said the United States, Japan and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization had equipment that could sniff the air and water around North Korea for signs of radioactivity.

So what this says to me is that in a week or so if we don't hear about radiation levels consistent with a Nuclear Test,  it's a hoax. 

Others:

Washington Times - U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
    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.
    "We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports.
    "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."
    The underground explosion, which Pyongyang dubbed a historic nuclear test, is thought to have been the equivalent of several hundred tons of TNT, far short of the several thousand tons of TNT, or kilotons, that are signs of a nuclear blast, the official said.
    The official said that so far, "it appears there was more fizz than pop."

Washington Post - The explosion set off by North Korea yesterday appears to have been extremely small for a nuclear blast, complicating U.S. intelligence efforts to determine whether the country's first such test was successful or signaled that Pyongyang's capabilities are less advanced than expected, several senior U.S. and foreign government officials and analysts said...

A senior intelligence official called it a "sub-kiloton" explosion detonated inside a horizontal mountain tunnel and said its low yield caught analysts by surprise. "For an initial test, a yield of several kilotons has been historically observed," the official said...

Intelligence and administration officials said yesterday they believed North Korea had managed a nuclear test of some sort, but because of the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the lack of scientific data, some observers would not eliminate the possibility that the blast was created by conventional explosives.

The relatively small size of the explosion, along with North Korea's public statement that the test did not produce any radioactive leakage, led some to question how well the test had gone. Small amounts of leakage are normal during nuclear tests, though it can take several days for the ventilation to register. One U.S. official said radiation detectors in the region were being monitored for any signs in the air from the nuclear test.

"A low yield can be a failure in design or it can be bad luck," said Michael A. Levi, a nuclear expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Anything is possible," he said, including simulating a low-yield nuclear explosion by using large quantities of TNT, as the U.S. military had planned to do last summer.

"But you don't hear anyone who thinks it's a conventional [explosives] test," he said.

This is basically what I said yesterday.  It probably was a nuclear test, the question is how successful?

tags: North+Korea, Nuclear+Weapons, WMD, Current+Affairs