In the days ahead, we’ll hear all kinds of reasons why the Nork nuke test was so sucktastic. (Suitcase bomb, anyone?) Dicky Destiny — a.k.a. Dr. George Smith, of GlobalSecurity.org — has a plausible early candidate: “‘fizzle yield’; that is, the smallest nuclear yield [a] particular device could provide.“
“… [T]here is a moment when the [bomb’s] fissile material becomes critical (projectile still on its way to its destination [in a gun-type weapon], or only a small part of the material compressed [in an implosion-type weapon]) and the time it reaches its intended state. During this interval, the degree of supercriticality is building up toward its final value. If a chain reaction were initiated by neutrons from some other source during this period, the yield realized would be much smaller –possibly a great deal smaller — than the nominal yield. Such an event is referred to as preinitiation (or sometimes predetonation).
… “If the [bomb’s] assembly velocities (of the projectile or material driven by an implosion) are quite low, the earliest possible preinitiation could lead to an energy release (equivalent weight of high explosive) not many times larger than the weight of the device.“
Other parts of the discussion on bomb design obstacles, also presented at the seminar, indicated that yields lower by a factor of ten in crude designs can be indicative of fizzles. What information has been published on the North Korean test falls into this range.
Summarized, there are certain number of things that can go wrong when firing your first atomic bomb, particularly when using a crude design. And one might expect to see them from a weird and crazy hermit nation, like North Korea, endeavoring to enter the nuclear club.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
So, Kim Jong Il has a problem with… finishing prematurely? Figures.
Man, I love those photos of the first milliseconds of the Trinity test. It makes me want to make a fried egg for breakfast tomorrow.
The possibility of North Korea deploying a nuclear weapon :
When considering the use of a nuclear weapon in an armed conflict today , it is not the technical capacity to deliver the warhead or the device that is the main concern once it is an established fact that any given adversary has gone nuclear.It is more likely that the North Koreans will bluff about them being able to retaliate to attack with nuclear weapons ,thus creating a situation politically were it can limit the possible responses or actions from the US,ROK ,Japan or China to gain an advantage.The potential damage to international relations caused by threats of nuclear attacks otr actual attacks is something the US would have to consider rather finely.The North Koreans ,of course ,have few such considerations to take ,given their status politically.Having a nuclear weapon is -ironically- the one thing that actually will give the US military planners a conundrum when it comes to the feasability of winning a war.Ghaddafi failed to produce his ,and is currently trying his best to become acceptable in Europe-he has no other option as he knows the risk of US invasion is real.Iran is trying its best to play for time to get their bomb or at least get some guarantees from one of the major powers ( EU,RUSSIA, CHINA),that a US powergrab in Iran will be blocked.Once they have their bomb , their relative proximity to oilfields the US depend on will make for a very hard hand to beat in the game of international political powerplay.Until then their best hope is to continue a diplomatic stalling process.North Korea probably has one or more nuclear devices .Most likely they are ill suited for the high tech modern day warfare.But they can still manage to use such a device as a weapon in other ways than the usual misile&bomber delivery system /fashion .Placing the device in an area crucial to US advance in a theoretical invasion for instance,or attacking a major ROK population center .
The fact that a nation has gone nuclear alone alters the whole situation.Military options become severly limited ,and political means become correspondingly more important.
Rolf Larsen
North korea might simply use an heu fueled
gun type nuclear warhead on its missiles .
The gun type design is easily adaptable to
long range missile delivery. We therefore need
to deploy at least several hundred A. B. M.s around the united states to shoot down things such as north korean Icbms.
tim
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