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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."
OMG, they perfected Cold Fusion!
Maybe all the North Koreans jumped up and down at the same time.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I think it's funny that this article is under the Hardware section. Maybe we could get Tom's Hardware to produce a 25-page full benchmark test of this nuclear explosion v. competing nuclear tests, and then we'll really get to the bottom of this.
Pfft, Canada does accidental explosions best: Halifax Explosion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion Atleast 200kTons there...
Iran has also exploded a nuclear bomb. Or something. We're not really sure. Coulda been anything really.
Seriously though - is this really news ? Shouldn't we wait until it's confirmed one way or the other before it makes sense to comment on it ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Explosive_De tonation_Velocities
I agree. The guy lies so much that it is impossible to tell whats going on. Though I do hope he bursts in to flames tonight for no reason.
Are we justified sanctioning and otherwise punishing it, even if it lied?
This is more than an abstract question (like the famous "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there...").
Saddam's Hussein downfall was (at least partially) brought about by his insinuating that he still has WMDs privately — to keep neighbors in fear, soldiers brave, and citizens proud, while claiming loudly, that he got rid of them all (which turned out to be true, after all)...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The ironic thing is, the nations of the world are looking to impose sanctions - but can we really impose sanctions if it turns out it wasnt a nuke in the first place?
I have nukes!
No you don't
Boom!
That wasn't a nuke!
Boom!
Sorry, just don't believe you!
Boom!
No no.. never. That was just gas.
errrr.
Oh.. you used all your material and you are out now?
(reminds me of puss and boots with the mouse).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
For years they guy has been openly claiming to be working on a bomb. The fact that he does not unambiguously have one yet is astounding.
With all the information that is public, it *is* trivial to create a bomb. Access to plutonium, which he has, is the hard part.
I hate to introduce politics, but it has to be said, Saddam maybe, could have, possibly, been working on something, if you look at the intelligence "just so." North Korea, has been openly saying they are working on these bombs. North Korea sells arms to our enemies. I blame Bush on all counts. The guy is all about acquiring power, but without the wisdom or honor to use it well.
I am remeinded if Bill Maher, Usually you have an administration that is corrupt or one that is inept. The Bush administration is both.
I really wouldn't be amazed if it wasn't a nuke. They obviously want people to think they have nukes (whether they do or not) because otherwise they wouldn't have said they were going to do it and just passed it off as a light earthquake.
One can easily see from the increase in prestige and offers that Iran has been given for just saying that they want nuclear power that it gives your country an "edge"... I think it has backfired a bit - but we'll have to wait and see. Either way it's understandable why he would want to make it look like he has them. If Kim was thinking about the situation rationally then he would also know why China wouldn't want to put too many conditions on North Korea - which is to say that what China really fear is thousands of immigrants flooding in, after all, the nukes North Korea has will never rival China; and they can't even deliver the bombs anyway! (as far as I know they only have the ability to deliver something like that on a boat or train, really)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
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.
..a real nuke, but the government right now REALLY doesn't want it to be a real nuke, because they would have to put up or shut up over their "no nukes for axis of e-vile" places. So who knows? They have been more or less threatening Iran now for a long time on the theory they are even developing one, and saying "dire consequences" and a lot of pre emptive strike speculation, etc. So, what can they do to N. Korea if they really had one? Invade, or a pre emptive strike? Ha! They are already on the serious manure list for most everything, what else practically can they do about it? What "sanctions" are even left of any importance that aren't already beng imposed?
OK, get back to the question. If a nuke was buried deep enough and the caverns sealed before the blast, with a very small nuke, would radiation escape to be detected? And wasn't there a lot of talk the other day that the seismograph guys were good enough to tell just from the signature?
It's not so hard to pile up ten thousand tons of conventional explosive, and as discussed in the previous thread on the test itself there is some value in convincing your neighbors that you have nuclear weapons regardless of whether you actually have them.
The revised seismic figures were (if I recall right) something like 0.5 kT equivalent. The smallest easy-to-build bombs (those that have supercritical assemblies without hyper-compression of the metal) yield something like 10-30 kT, so this was either a fizzled nuke or a large pile of ANFO (or something like that).
In the last discussion I made a big deal about the Kamioka observatory and how they "should" have been able to see neutrinos from the blast -- but with an 0.5kT blast the number of neutrino interactions is only 1 or 2, so they can't be expected to distinguish a large chemical explosion from a very small fizzled nuclear explosion.
You can seal the site before detonation. It's not that difficult. The US has done it hundreds of times during the cold war and just before.
Also, the estimates (which vary according to which country you ask) are less than 1 kt. As far as nukes go, that is very tiny. How much rad would you expect from this? How deep was the explosion? I know that they registered seismic activity, which was how they knew it happened. How accurate can one guage depth using seismographic equipment?
For some perspective, the US 1954 Castle Bravo test was 15 MEGA tons, and it was a mistake, they were only expecting like 1/3rd of that. The "ruskies" detonated 50 Mt, the largest ever, in 1961. There has been over 2,000 nuclear tests by the world nuke powers since they began, most of them from the US.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
In between bouts of decrying "Sooo Wone-wy", Kim was quoted as saying that news of the faked nuke test was "Inebbidable!"
Now Kim Jong-il is spreading FUD...
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
North Korea seems to have failed at the very essence of the Nuclear test. The idea isn't to test if your nuclear bomb work, you better fucking know your technology is ready before you even hint you have the bomb. The idea of a nuclear test is to PROVE you have the bomb, and to prove it works, and to show everyone you got big balls. They have not done this, and this further proves it. They might have one, but you don't brag about an underground nuclear test unless you have something to prove and North Korea definatly has that.
Personally I think it proves they DONT have a bomb.... yet. And more likely their real first test will be over Japan/Israel/South Korea/ whereever else, and their second will be during the all out nuclear bombardment where all the countries give them all the nuclear power they need, though they'll have to figure out how to contain it.
North Korea and Iran are both playing dangerous games. They are acting like children at the grown ups tables. Let's hope they mature or get slapped before they become teenagers who get into a massive car accident and "kill" one or more of the adults
If we run around telling him he didn't really explode a nuke then it's only incentive for him to try again. Far better to pat him on the head and pretend it was the world's most wildly successful nuke test and get down to the business of what to do about it.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Damn that Bush -- another false claim of WMD.
Just because NKorea is also falsely claiming they're real, doesn't mean that Bush can slander them by agreeing.
... so the Bush Administration says.
They never bothered with it before, why bother with it now? I mean evidence just detracts from the issues they are pushing.
So let's see... you're saying that if we got back a first round of air samples, and the only way you heard one way or the other about it was through some leak, you wouldn't be complaining about the lack of transparency? Well, which is it? Do you want the data as it comes, NASA-style, or do you want to wait while the DoD and DoE and other agencies chew on it for some indeterminate time and make what may never be a conclusive conclusion? For everyone here that bitches about not getting enough raw info from the government about what's happening with crazies like NK, it seems that no good deed goes unpunished. Or, were you just looking to bash, no matter what happened or didn't?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I don't think it makes sense to drop 500 (or 1000) tons of explosives in a hole, blowing it up and pretending it to be a nuke. Such a small explosion would certainly give the idea of a fizzle, showing that NK does not have weapons yet (since the "prototype" failed). It would also show that a nuclear capability is imminent, so everyone interested would be acting to prevent that.
On the other hand, gun type bombs are not really tested that much. Little boy went straight to hiroshima without testing, because the scientists thought it would work (unlike fat-man, they did the trinity test for that).
Besides, North Korea was producing plutonium, that if I remember correctly, cannot be used in gun type bombs (it detonates too soon, blows apart and you get a dud).
I think they were testing their implosion bomb, and it fizzled. That does not mean they do not have a few gun types in a bunker somewhere.
GPG 0x1B479C78
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.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
They are using it as a point of blackmail. If you look at their rhetoric they are demanding that the world congratulate them on their successful test, saying that any sanctions will be an act of war (wtf?), and that how they proceed from here will depend on how nice people are to them.
To run with your analogy this is like someone holding a gun to their child's head and demanding you give them money to not shoot their kid. Regardless of if it's a cap gun, the fact that they'd stoop to that level of blackmail means that they need to be stopped.
Sony recently confirmed its disposal of the previously mentioned exploding batteries by means of burying them in a landfill of North Korea. The landfill was stuffed to capacity and sealed off early last week. Sony reports it intends to bury the remaining defective units somewhere in Iran.
test is to prove that you have a nuke. Testing publicly before you actually had more than a few dozen seems silly. Nobody in their right minds would threaten to use a Nuke, particularly if they only had one or two. Sure they might cause a localised disaster here - how much damage can one nuke cause to the US - but the response would turn the whole country into a sheet of glass.
Who bets this was a well calculated plan by some sensible N.K. scientists to demonstrate that in fact they have nothing for us to fear.
Of course idiot Kim wouldn't know what a real nuke is capable of, probably felt the earth shake and thought to himself, "cool, now I have a big penis too.". Also a calculated response from some sensible N.K. scientists.
Apparently nobody recalls the catastrophic "mysterious" explosion of a train in North Korea last year?
Hm...why would they be shipping railcars full of explosive anywhere?
Face it, "dear leader" is just an attention wh0re.
Although I confess I expected that he would have at least loaded the cave with a bunch of Fiestaware? Old smoke detectors? bought off ebay to give it SOME sort of radiation signature.
-Styopa
The theory is trivial, and the tech and materials are mostly trivial, again with the exception of the plutonium. But that doesn't mean constructing a working implosion device is trivial. You have to be extremely precise in your calculations in order to pull it off. This is why the culmination of a nuclear program always involves a live test, because that's really the only way to be sure that your math and engineering were correct.
And, because in the modern age there are thousands of seismic sites and many radiological sites that can detect the seismic and radioactive signature of a nuclear explosion, a nuclear test is also the announcement that you have succeeded in your nuclear ambitions. For a recent example of how a nuclear test is both final exam and public announcement, see Pakistan.
So the fact that a successfull nuclear test would be quite apparent (and as we are seeing the absence of a nuclear test as well), and that NK called China to tell them so they would be sure China was watching closely, tells me that this was probably a real nuclear test. A test that, it would appear, failed. If memory serves, they told China to expect a 2KT explosion, with the actual measurement at about 0.5KT?
Sounds to me like they had at best a partial detonation of the nuclear material, but didn't have the timing of the high explosives good enough to pack all the plutonium into a small enough ball for it all to react before the reaction force blew it apart.
Saddam could bluff about having chemical weapons. Kim can bluff about developing nukes, but it really doesn't make sense to try to bluff a nuclear test. And of course we know he desperately wants them. So I'm going with the theory that this was a real nuclear test, just a failed one, and North Korea doesn't have a working nuke yet, but they are very close. The data from just this test may be enough for them to fix it.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's far better that they blow up their own country than someone else's. Just keep saying "Nuh-uh!" long enough, and they'll waste some more of their weapons grade materiel in a mountain compression exercise...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What if the explosion in 2004 happened while transporting / stacking explosives to fake a nuclear test?o n_disaster&oldid=79574083
See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ryongch
k2r
Why, I bomb the locker for a few weeks and then send in 150,000 troops to the locker next to it. What else could I possible DO in a situation like this???"
Fixed it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I knew China wasn't really going to do much about the advertised nuclear testing in North Korea. Just days ago, fellow Americans argued that China would help America every step of the way. The reports on BBC News beats a far different tone.
The problem with Nukes is two fold really. First, it's pretty much science and that much every man has the right to know; problem solving is a capability inherent in all humans. So, I think the main factors of developing such technology reside soley in ability to apply the acquired/developed knowledge of a group of scientists. Controlling who gets what materials currently known to work. Politics comes into play here, make the world look down on you if you do go through with it. But, nothing can stop a person from going to a library and picking up a book; and for men of the calibur to become Generals and National Leaders... determination is every bit as tangible as the solid brick wall infront of you.
I have little doubt in my mind that North Korea detonated a nuclear device. We all have a very basic and crude understanding of how it fundamentally works. It's really only a magnitude of elegance and stability between my 600lbs of home-made shock stabalized nitro-glycerin, nitrocelulos and gun-powder, all crudely shape charged towards colliding necessary fuels together with enough force to initiate a violent nuclear reaction. But, how on earth am I going to get the "fuel" from? All the other stuff is relatively easy to come by with a little effort.
Sooner or later, Afghanistan will have the capacity to build a thermo-nuclear device. Sri-Lanka, Madagascar, Iran, Chechnya perhaps. An elegant, stable one even; probably far more sophisticated and engineered than what we currently have, by the time they do. Along the way, those opponents against developing nuclear arms are left with their hands tied behind their back. Like I said, there's only two real controlling factors, politics and resources. Once an interest group gets their hands on the resources, they may ignore the politics if they so choose to. Which leads me to...
Perhaps, the only thing left to do is try to belittle the effort of the target (North Korea), hiding under the reality that not one authority in the entire world would have any allies at all should they pre-emptively launch a nuclear weapon at anyone. Then, quitely, accept the fact they have Nuclear Weapons. I'm surprised that one may often run into an American at a bar or club, who has yet to aware of the fact India and Pakistan are Nuclear. Even knowing so, still doesn't sit right due to how much poverty exists in those countries...
So, I think all of this hooplah (including the wikipedia implicitly saying that the explosion was conventional by adding it to a list of large conventional explosions.), is just aftermath propoganda warfare.
UPDATE ON THIS STORY AS OF 8:30PM EASTERN:
US has evidence of radioactivity from North Korea
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/13/nkorea .test.sample/index.html
They've developed a method for predicting earthquakes and made up the story about the nuclear explosions so they can keep their technology secret a little longer. It's all a big cover up.
This is all about payola. The western powers and china don't want the North Koreans selling weapons grade nuclear fuel on the open market. The size of the explosion is irrelevent.
It's simply a statement in poker game. You didn't believe we could do it... Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Now pay up!
The truth is that if North Korea fuel actually was used in a terrorist attack on the US, north korea would be blown off the map and there would be raidiaon fallout in asia for at least 20 to 40 years and to a lesser extent all over the rest of the world.
China already knows the score, they will be notified of any immmenent attack and given the option of taking North Korea out themselves when the time comes in exchange for something like a hundred billion dollars. Of course south korea would be devestated and that's why we don't just do it now.
U.S. intelligence statement: N. Korea radioactivity detected
a .test.sample/index.html
From http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/13/nkore
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- 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.
The statement, from the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, was sent to Capitol Hill but not released publicly. CNN obtained it from a congressional source.
If confirmed, the nuclear weapons test that North Korea claimed it conducted on Monday would be the first of its kind since Pakistan's underground blast in 1998.
Pyongyang's claim has renewed fears of a regional arms race and that North Korea might aid terrorists with nuclear materials or technology.
The national intelligence office statement said the air samples were collected Wednesday, and analysis found debris that would be consistent with a nuclear test "in the vicinity of Punggye" on Monday.
"Additional analysis is ongoing and will be completed in a few days," the statement said.
The South Korean Defense Ministry told CNN that the United States has informed it that radioactivity has been detected.
The report is in contrast to information provided to CNN earlier Friday from two U.S. government officials with access to classified information. Those officials said that an initial air sampling over North Korea showed no indication of radioactive debris.
The White House said it had no confirmation that the North Koreans conducted a nuclear test.
"We've seen the various press reports," said National Security Council spokesman Fred Jones. "We still have no definitive statement on the event. The intelligence community continues to analyze the data."
The U.S. Air Force flew a WC-135 Constant Phoenix atmospheric collection aircraft on Tuesday to collect air samples from the region.
The intelligence community and the military will also continue to collect air samples in the region and use satellite information to try to collect radiological data that would confirm a nuclear test, officials said. But as time goes on, it will be increasingly difficult to achieve confirmation.
Officials emphasized earlier Friday that the data collected are preliminary and provide no conclusive evidence about the North Korean event.
It is possible there was no radiological data. That could be the case if: the North Koreans successfully sealed the site; it was such a small detonation and so deep underground there was no escape of nuclear debris; or the test was actually conventional explosives.
The U.N. Security Council has agreed to vote Saturday on whether to impose sanctions on North Korea over the purported nuclear test, according to John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, Jamie McIntyre and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
"Aside from the first one, which was the Iranian president and not Chavez"
It was the Venezuelan dictator who made the speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world for the last 2,000 years. This speech was Dec. 24, 2005.
"But one thing is still true about him, this being pretty much the fundamental law of communism--he's still better than the nasty right-wing fucker who immediately preceded him(Lenin and the Tsars, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, Castro and Batiste)."
You need to check your history:
Lenin: The Tsars (who had already moderated a whole lot) were gone by the time Lenin seized power. Lenin actually overthrew a fledgling post-Tsar democracy. He made things significantly worse, grabbing for himself more power than the Tsars ever had, re-invading the former vassal states that the Tsars had actually let go free, and slaughtering many hundreds of thousands of people.
Mao and Chiang Kai-shek: Clearly no comparison at all here. Mao ordered more than 30,000,000 people killed. The relatively mild legacy of Chiang has been apparent in how Taiwan was ran after Mao's conquest. Chiang's government, the Nationalists, had run all of China for quite a while before Mao came along: pre-Mao China was significantly lacking in the routine atrocity that Mao ushered in. Do you really know anything about it at all?
Castro and Batista: Aside from the mass execution of political prisoners by Castro, and the many tens of thousands killed by his invasions of other countries (Batista stayed home), there are so many other factors such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press (many beleaguered newspapers under Batista, no independent ones at all under Castro).
Every single one of these was much worse than the one before. That's the fundamental law of Communism.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Every one of those examples was Communist. You are correct that they are "governments run by a single person or very small group where everything in the country is owned by them". That is how communism ends up being out here in the real world. We have seen plenty of communism in all of its glory. What this probably boils down to is disagreements among factions of communists as to which are the real communists. Then it becomes a matter similar to 7th Day Adventists saying that Catholics are not Christians. If the majority of those involved in a movement can't go a long way to DEFINING it, who can? Scores of millions of members of the ruling Communist Parties of these countries can't be ignored.
"The only socialism the world has seen has been in democratic countries."
Socialism is the degree to which ruling elites control the private and personal economic affairs of the people. Socialism has been very strong in the named communist countries. It has been weak in the democracies.
Where were you when the voynix came?