North Korea aparently conducted its first nuke test

[SSJ4 Gogitta]

The Daily Item

Report: North Korea Conducts Nuke Test


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korean government officials said North Korea performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test Monday, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun convened an urgent meeting of security advisers over the issue, Yonhap reported.

The North said last week it would conduct a nuclear test as part of its deterrent against a possible U.S. invasion.

[squakMix]

Source?

[SSJ4 Gogitta]

The Daily Item

Breitbart

CNN

Fox

ABC

[squakMix]

What a fucking idiot.

[hgnis]

Just saw this. Get ready for the ride folks, its about to hit the fan...

[SSJ4 Gogitta]

That may be it. (edit: It is. The "quake" is listed as being at 0135 GMT, the time that the test occured.) Registered a 4.2.

Reuters lists the tremor as "magnitude 3.58 to 3.7".


N. Korea stock dropping.

[zootm]

...holeeee shit!

Edit:

[rockouthippie]

The chinese are pretty cheesed saying "This cannot be tolerated". The problem with detonating nuclear bombs in Korea is that korea is very wet. Contamination of their ground water and the surrounding oceans is a real concern.

That's why nobody really expected this. We think that they were involved in a Pakistan nuclear test back in 1998, because Pakistan obstensibly didn't have enough nuclear material.

Registering a 3.4 on the richter scale in South Korea, whatever they've built, it's sure not a firecracker.

[zootm]

China are super-pissed, yeah. By the way of confirmation, the US are reporting that they did monitor the earthquake that was caused, and Russia have said they are "100% certain" that a test has occurred.

Edit:
The Q&A on the BBC site is good for background information, if anyone's interested.

[will]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
Registering a 3.4 on the richter scale in South Korea, whatever they've built, it's sure not a firecracker.

According to the AP:

South Korea's geological institute estimated that the test's power was equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, far smaller than the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II.

So maybe it's not that far off a firecracker.

[ElChevelle]

Prepare the puppets!

[CaboWaboAddict]

Originally posted by will
According to the AP:
So maybe it's not that far off a firecracker.

0.5 Kilotons may not sound like much, but there are reports it was a Neutron bomb... in which case it was very significant.

[MidnightViper88]

Originally posted by will
According to the AP:
So maybe it's not that far off a firecracker.

A nuke's a nuke...

Regardless of how big the explosion is, if it can kill a bunch of people and cause a radioactive fallout, it's a nuke...Now, the only question we have to ask ourselves is if it's actually a nuke, or if it's just a big flub by some other lower bomb...Either way, it's hard to downplay a wingnut like Kim Jong Ill, even if he did have only a firecracker...

These next few weeks are gonna be frustrating as hell...North Korea has just tested a nuke, they wanna test another, and all we wanna do is hold more 6-party diplomatic talks, and all the UN will do is impose more sanctions...

Greaaaaaat...What will we do if North Korea wants to "test" a nuke on top of another nation?

[Mattress]

test some nukes on them I'd guess.

Re: the relatively small explosion: they probably don't want to waste precious fissionable material on their test nukes since it's probably not too easy for them to get a lot of it.

[rockouthippie]

It's almost like this stopped being our problem. China and Japan have agreed that this is "unnacceptable". That's probably the first time they've agreed on anything in a century.

I think the Chinese think, rightly, that this could be an excuse for Japan to arm.

I'm almost expecting for NKs neighbors to take care of this. It may not be our problem. I think China and Japan are far more threatened by this than we are.

For China, I think it's fear of getting bit by their own dog. I half suspect that the arms buildup by the Chinese, which some of the west have attributed as a threat to Taiwan, might be for another reason.

[Mattress]

another hypothesis for the relative smallness of the nuclear explosion is that they are testing suitcase sized nukes.

[SSJ4 Gogitta]

The smallest nukes made were the MK-54 SADM, and the Davy Crocket. They're both bigger than suitcases.

Davy Crocket, yield- 10 to 20 tons:


MK-54 SADM, dial-a-yield- 10 tons to 1 kiloton:



Those are also, like, Cold War era.

[Mattress]

certainly technology since the cold war era has not gotten any smaller...

[SSJ4 Gogitta]

Originally posted by Mattress
certainly technology since the cold war era has not gotten any smaller...

The ammount of material to reach critical mass, however, hasn't changed. You can only go so small with nukes. The Davy Crocket is probably not a whole heck of a lot larger than any modern small nuke.

[Phyltre]

That Crocket would make a killer paperweight.

[Mattress]

nice pun.

[discoleo]

If I remember correctly, the critical mass is 12 kg of Plutonium (do not remember isotope). That can easily fit in a suitcase (well, it would be pretty radioactive, but as a quantity it definitely fits in the suitcase).

Modern bombs have beyond the original Plutonium core some hydrogen around (and are actually more like H-bombs, but I may be wrong on this one).

COMPELTELY MISSING THE POINT
Nevertheless, the point of *nuclear bomb* is so irrelevant (and was so irrelevant in all the past 50 years), that I can not imagine why people were so dumb to believe it is the ultimate weapon.

Every nation that has a nuclear plant has such a powerful deterrant that it DOES NOT NEED a nuclear device.

Do you remember Chernobyl? Only a small part of the nuclear fuel/ waste of just one reactor was spilled in the atmosphere, and that was enough for widespread destruction. (that is why they sent 10,000 soldiers to certain death to burry the reactor under thick concrete.)

So, every nation having a single nuclear reactor can build effective dirty bombs. And even NK conforming to the stringent US conditions would be able to do so. So I miss the point for this whole story. They just need to stockpile their waste for 2-3 years (the waste is inactivated in some 10,000 years, so it won't become less toxic for A VERY< VERY LONG TIME) and have enough material to exterminate most of the planet.

Differences between nuclear and dirty bomb
- atomic bomb would destroy the buildings,
- while they would remain intact after a dirty bomb
- yet they would be inhabitable due to the fallout
- fallout after dirty bomb is much longer (100s of years to thousands of years)
- the dirty bomb is completely insensitive to the newly introduced US shield as it is designed NOT to explode, BUT to disperse its nuclear material into the atmosphere over a wide area, so in some way this shield would do exactly this
- the only advantage of the nuclear bomb is when you want to konquer some land (because of the significantly shorter fallout), but I have serious doubts NK will try to konquer the US;

I have posted similar comments on CNN and BBC but they did not make it, at least until now.

[Mattress]

a bioweapon would be much better than a dirty bomb . kill off the population, leave the infrastructure untouched and useable for re-population with your own people.

[discoleo]

But I doubt the NK regime and the NK people would want to inhabit the US. Just my thaughts.

[Mattress]

I bet most of the NK people would love to inhabit the US, even without us being dead. problem is NK government won't let them leave.

even being homeless in the US is probably a million times better than living in NK.

[ertmann|CPH]

Don't know what's going on with Abe, he is, or atleast was, a complete nutjob - promoting pre WWII nationalism, now he's restoring diplomatic relations with Japans main rival, and completely ruling out Japan getting nuclear weapons.
fucking weird

Allthough, should they ever need it, they could probaly make one faster than North Koreas pedal powered rockets could reach Japan.