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North Korea Air Sample Shows Radiation
Apocalypse111 writes, "According to CNN.com, air samples taken over North Korea have not yet shown any radiation from the event on Monday that North Korea claims was a nuclear test. This is not definitive proof that the event was non-nuclear, as it may either have been so small and deep that it did not let any radioactive debris escape, or perhaps the North Koreans sealed the site." Furthering speculation over whether North Korea has actually exploded a nuclear device, vk38 writes to point out a (free) article in today's Wall Street Journal claiming that the blast could have been
set off by exploding fertilizer (ammonium nitrate). The article points to the
Texas City disaster of 1947, in which 7,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the hold of a ship with the estimated power of 2 to 4 kilotons of TNT.
Update: 10/14 08:03 GMT by Z : The story at CNN has been updated: "A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows 'radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,' according to a statement from the office of the top U.S. intelligence official."
Update: 10/14 08:03 GMT by Z : The story at CNN has been updated: "A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows 'radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,' according to a statement from the office of the top U.S. intelligence official."
Pfft, Canada does accidental explosions best: Halifax Explosion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion Atleast 200kTons there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Explosive_De tonation_Velocities
How the hell would NK come up with some 500 fully loaded dump trucks worth of fertilizer, and dump it in a hole? It would be visible from the friggin moon.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
IANAE (I am not an expert), but underground nuclear explosions do usually not emmit radioactivity, at least at the moment.
As far I understood an article I read some time ago, the gigantic heat of the explosion melts the surronding soil into a glass cave which conceils the radioactive mess.
The problem is only after years of even decades, this glass sealing can (and at some point will) break and set the radioactivity free. Then the radiation levels will boost up... Thats another problem of humanity waiting we create now (our legacy for our kids).. all this sealed nuke-eggs from past underground expiriments loosing integrity at some future point.
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
We had a departmental meeting about this the other day where a bunch of nuclear engineering professors got together and discussed what they thought had happened. The concensus was that this was actually a nuclear device. Almost definately. The seismic signals are the giveaway, and here's why. When a pile of chemicals explodes, they explode on a timescale of the speed of sound. So, the seismic signal from the explosion would be on the order of micro- to milli-seconds. When a nuclear device explodes, it happens in the time it takes for fast neutrons (>200keV) to get across a few centimeters. Now we're talking about nanoseconds. The seismic people have enough experience looking at explosions to be able to tell chemical from nuclear, and this one apparently looks nuclear. It also looks to be 0.5kT or so. That makes it by far the smallest yield 1st test ever. Which either means they have perfected making small bombs (which is incredibly complicated and wasn't done by the Los Alamos people until 15 years after their first test), or they failed in their test. The latter is very likely. They've also wasted a lot of Pu-239 or U-235 (probably Pu) and contaminated their expensive underground test facility. Lets count the days together to see how long they take to test again. If it's quick, they have plenty of material. Only time will tell.