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Home » Nukes » Korea Nuke: a ‘Fizzle?’

Korea Nuke: a ‘Fizzle?’

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.“
vc68a.4a.jpg

“… [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.

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October 10th, 2006 | Nukes, Those Nutty Norks | 213839 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/10/10/korea-nuke-a-fizzle/Korea+Nuke%3A+a+%27Fizzle%3F%272006-10-10+14%3A48%3A56jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

« « U.S. ‘Dragnet’ Hunts for Nuke Clues | Nork Fallout: Asia Arms Race? » »

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  1. Brian says:
    October 10, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    So, Kim Jong Il has a prob­lem with… fin­ish­ing pre­ma­turely? Figures.

    Reply
  2. Robot.Economist says:
    October 10, 2006 at 4:03 pm

    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.

    Reply
  3. Rolf Larsen says:
    October 11, 2006 at 7:24 am

    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

    Reply
  4. tim says:
    November 3, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    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

    Reply
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