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Update — Sensors Do Not Pick Up North Korean Radioactivity
Update: 02/19 20:49 GMT by S : The story below has been retracted upon further examination of the research. There has been no detection of radioactivity.
gbrumfiel writes "A global network of sensors has picked up faint traces of radioactive gas that probably seeped from last week's underground nuclear test by North Korea. The detection of xenon-133 in Japan and Russia provides further evidence of the nuclear nature of the test, but offers no hint as to the type of weapon used. Atmospheric modelling by the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna shows that the gas likely seeped from North Korea's test site on 15 February, three days after the original test. That indicates that the test was well sealed deep underground."
gbrumfiel writes "A global network of sensors has picked up faint traces of radioactive gas that probably seeped from last week's underground nuclear test by North Korea. The detection of xenon-133 in Japan and Russia provides further evidence of the nuclear nature of the test, but offers no hint as to the type of weapon used. Atmospheric modelling by the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna shows that the gas likely seeped from North Korea's test site on 15 February, three days after the original test. That indicates that the test was well sealed deep underground."
I don't know, guys, after watching this video from KCNA news I'm kind of concerned. I mean the United States' air force is being overrun with cost and we've only built 63 F-35 aircraft. How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?! And defending Pyongyang they have 40 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29s! 40 + 40 = 70 and 70 > 63!!!
In the video, you can see the pilot explain that they will reduce me to ash! TO ASH! And they only need six minutes! Look at how hard he must have studied to learn how to fly a jet fighter, clearly he knows what he's talking about. Apparently I'm guilty of state sponsored terrorism against the North Koreans and I didn't even know it! Welp, I'm withdrawing all my savings and spending it on hookers and blow, for in six minutes we all might be ash. Catchy tune at the end too, that's a real earworm, I'll be whistling that one all the way to the firestorm they are going to unleash on me.
Oh great and powerful Korean People's Army Air Force, please have mercy on my electricity having soul! I knew not what I was terrorizing!
My work here is dung.
This means we can finally get new Mac Pros!
When they had their accident above ground.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Isn't it obvious? The NKoreans are all over THIS WEBSITE buying as much Uranium as they can!
sudo make me a sandwich
Are we sure someone DIDN'T already nuke North Korea? From everything I've seen or heard about that country, you'd be better off living in the Fallout universe than North Korea.
A story about North Korea and you guys put a Japanese flag up?
If a 'well sealed' nuclear test releases 'faint traces', let's be thankful that it wasn't a 'badly sealed' one. I mean, wouldn't a 'well sealed' one mean no traces at all?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
For those interested, the reason security forces are trying to determine the content of the gas is that everyone is very interested in whether U or Pu was used to construct the bomb. If U was used, it is possible that they are receiving the materials and/or know-how from Iran, and that Iran may be using NK as a proxy for testing in exchange for food/tech items which Iran can purchase using gold through Turkey to get around sanctions.
China and Russia will not agree. Also innocent people... asshat.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Kim Jong Un is growing!
There are innocent people in North Korea?? wtf?? They PK me all the time in every MMO I've ever played.... :-/
http://www.amazon.com/Cloverdale-Fresh-Whole-Rabbit/dp/B00012182G/ref=pd_sbs_indust_3
I guess that's better than rotten half rabbit.
This sig is false.
My quibble is with the word I highligted: "well sealed". The Nature article (TFA #1) puts it like this:
The original German announcement (TFA 3) is... well, it's in German. But the equivalent of "well-sealed" or "well-buried" is "gut 'contained'":
Yeah. The English word "contained", in quotes. So maybe TFS could have used "well-contained"?
"Well-sealed" is gratuitously non-literal. "Sealed" is an absolute. Either something is sealed or it isn't. "Poorly sealed" is a needlessly verbose synonym for "unsealed". "Well sealed" but "leaked radiation" just hurts my head.
"Well-buried" is a fair description. Very literal, and doesn't carry any paradoxical implications.
And. C'mon, folks. The Austrians actually used the word "contained". It's a good word. It must be, if someone's going to borrow it from English for what is otherwise all German. It's an appropriate word. "Containment" never implies absoluteness, so it is everything "Sealed" isn't.
Executive summary: Submitter makes poor word choices in paraphrasing multiple sources which made perfectly good word choices, and damages the credibility of TFS in the process. ("Well sealed but leaky. Riiiiight.") And Slashdot editing is... Slashdot editing.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It's hard telling what NK will do but when you are that small, have little left to loose and a couple axes to grind, extreme becomes an inviting option. Especially if you've evolved in a bubble of your own manufactured reality. It might be funny to see them puff-up about their "military might" but we underestimated them once before and it didn't go well. In fact it REALLY didn't go well - for 15 years.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
If a 'well sealed' nuclear test releases 'faint traces', let's be thankful that it wasn't a 'badly sealed' one. I mean, wouldn't a 'well sealed' one mean no traces at all?
This is not the case, and the reason likely is that we're dealing with nuclear instead of chemical measurements.
IANA chemist or physicist, but from what I understand it's like this: while we can do pretty damn accurate measurements of chemicals, it's nothing compared to how well we can measure radioactive isotopes. They emit radiation by definition and therefore broadcast their presence. What's more, some specific radiation signatures only appear after nuclear tests.
Basically, there is an absurd amount of atoms all around us, and all of them get into everything. When you get close to the level of measuring single atoms you see the truth: there isn't really any such thing as "sealed" (if there are actual experts here you should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
It could well be that they had (or produced) the Xenon 133 that they leaked so that everyone would think they had a nuclear detonation rather than just an earthquake.
What I don't get is how all this happened. Didn't we tell NK that we wouldn't "tolerate" them having nuclear weapons?
Was our leadership just talking out of its ass, or is there intent to do something?
Is all our bluster anything more than the threat? Is our government saying, "STOP, or I'll say 'stop' again"? Our leadership needs to make good on their so-far empty threats. NK wants nukes SO bad, maybe we should just give them some. We can save money on the deliver too, by simply dropping them from passing aircraft, or using the built-in delivery rocket systems.
Seriously though, the idea that we don't want to fight a country because our bone of contention is with their government, and the people have no real control, isn't working. Their people support the government because they don't know any better, they must. We could try to educate them, except we'd have to invade or infiltrate to do it, which of course we can't do because for one thing, China is right there, and we've been stupidly funding their rise to power for the last couple dozen years. China wants NK to exist as a border between it and SK, but why? They have more in common with SK than maybe they want to admit. WTF?
We may simply have to blow NK off the face of the earth as a warning to anyone else, and to halt their program, but our government doesn't have the balls to do something like that, so I guess we'll just make more empty threats until they (inevitably) achieve the capability of threatening our friends in the region, global stability and security, or US. THEN we'll do something. The sad thing is that we don't do something BEFORE they go and kill a bunch of innocents somewhere like Japan, for example.
They flew a missile OVER Japan a few years back, which means they can hit Japan, and they have, it would seem, the ability to produce nukes. What happens when they say, "give us food or we're going to nuke Tokyo"?
Their people starve because they have to feed their military that they keep built-up against the threat of what? Invasion by the South? What are they afraid of, prosperity? NO! Not prosperity! We don't want to be able to feed ourselves, NO!
The longer other countries provide humanitarian relief for them, the longer they can prop up their failed, stupid, backward economic system (if you can call it that,) that only promotes mass-suffering, and for what? To prove Communism can work? It doesn't and can't, and it's been demonstrated again and again that the ideal of share-and-share-alike, lovely as it is, doesn't scale, and command-directed production is inherently inefficient, so much so that that country doesn't seem to be able to feed itself.
It's time to put up, or shut up. We need to do something about their government, or be prepared to watch the increasingly heavily armed thug in the region terrorize their neighbors and others around the world.
I'm not sure I'm convinced that DPRK even HAS nukes.
0) the Ryongchon disaster - a truly enormous conventional explosion of mysterious origin, variously assigned 'colliding trains with LNG', 'train of ammonium nitrate', and other really explosive stuff suggests that DPRK could have been shipping colossal amounts of explosives for years.
1) the 2006 nuke test was rated at 1 kt, and 'some' radioactivity was detected. Pretty much sounds like a great pile of explosives interleaved with old Fiestaware dishes would give about the same result.
2) the 2009 test was likewise not much more than a fizzle, nuclearly-speaking, rated at 2-4 kt. Still well within the range of "giant frikkin' minecraft-style pile of explosives".
3) the 2013 test has now been estimated at 5kt. Huge, yes, but still doable. (One 50-car train of explosives = 5kt explosives. The DPRK could easily assemble 50 boxcars of explosives over 4 years.)
(tinfoil hat/)
4) it fits the narrative; with AlQaeda a pathetic rump of an organization reduced to bombing girls schools in remote Afghani provinces, we need an "enemy" to justify ongoing defense spending and 'alertness'.
(/tinfoil hat)
-Styopa
how high up in the chain of command you have to be to realize how hopelessly outclassed you are in North Korea?
As in, do the fighter pilots know? How about their immediate superiors? How far up does one have to be before you really know the truth?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
People are terrified of nuclear anything, so this helps calm them down. There's nothing the average joe can do about nuclear war so why get them all frightened?...except for the fact that scared people buy more stuff.
nukes aren't that hard to make. I have little doubt that Korea has some... but big deal. A single bullet is enough to kill me, and those are everywhere.
Isn't Russia still missing some of their KGB suitcase nukes?
Can someone explain the retraction here? The Nature link just gives a 404, while the other link just goes to a logon page and there doesn't seem to be any other content on the site.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I was under the impression that people who were uncertain about the future (e.g. existentially afraid) spend less, and that it's one of the reasons why a recession is difficult to get out of.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Rome fell? So you're telling me that a single person based in Rome doesn't have power of millions of people throughout the developer and under developed world?
And now that he's had enough, he's going to retire and let someone else take over, appointed by a bunch of people that he put in place in the first place.
"Kim Jong Un's treatment of his citizens is utterly unacceptable. Therefore we have vapourised them."