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Update: 02/19 20:49 GMT by S : The story below has been retracted upon further examination of the research.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."

Comments

Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[eldavojohn]

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!

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?

Indeed, a Chinese copy of a Soviet airplane that was good in the 1970's would scare a Hornet or Eagle pilot shitless.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[interkin3tic]

Maybe if our military leaders had hats that were as big as that guy's hat, we wouldn't be lagging so far behind North Korea in air superiority. And democracy. I mean, we don't even have "Democratic" in our country name!

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[ColdWetDog]

Clearly he is unable to escort himself through the wilds of Slashdot. Where is his wingman?

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Soviet T-34 was vastly inferior to the German panzers as well.

Umm, no.

The T34/76 was considerably superior to any panzer then extant in 1941, when they were first encountered.

It wasn't until 1944 that the Germans reached the point that the overwhelming majority of Panzers were better than the T34/76.

And at that point, the Russians were building the T34/85, which was rather better than the latest version of Pzkw-4 (which was about half the German panzer inventory), though somewhat inferior to Pzkw-5 (the other half).

The only real weakness the T34 series of tanks had was lack of proper communications equipment (only the company commander's tank had a radio, for instance, until late in the war).

Plus that gawdawful commander's hatch on the earliest T34s....

If you feel that technology assures victory where is the Roman empire today?

If you think that the Roman Empire dominated the Classical World due to superior technology, you know even less of history than your comments about T34 suggest.

Hint: the Legions' doctrine was far more important than the Legions' technology (which was basically the same as everyone else's (iron swords, spear, torso armor and helmet) and considerably inferior to that used by the Persian cavalry at the time (yes, I've always been rather fond of the Persian composite bows as weapons of war - it's really too bad the Romans worked out a counter to it).

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[VAXcat]

Commenting on the reported much higher quality of the Nazi's armaments, Stalin is reported to have said "Quantity has a quality all its own".

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I think we've pretty clearly established throughout the history of the U.S. technology alone don't win wars.

Actually, we've established that US technology alone NEVER wins wars.

What we've established that wins wars is US production - we didn't win WW2 with superior technology, we won it because we could do things like build a military up from "small" to "fricking huge" while still having enough production surplus to provide weapons/supplies/whatever to everyone else in the world.

Note that one of the most interesting bits of trivia about WW2 is that the USA, during the war, built more aircraft carriers than existed in the entire world before the war.

And, more importantly, we built more transports (Liberty ships, anyone) than existed in the entire world before the war.

In the mid '30s, a German general, doing an analysis of mechanized warfare concepts noted that the USA had ~75% of the world's production capability in internal combustion engines. And quite properly concluded that that meant that going to war with America would be suicidal for Germany.

Too bad (for Hitler) that Hitler didn't read that sort of report.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that the hornet and eagle pilots are going to run out of ammo at some point, the planes are going to break down, the pilots will have to sleep, long before the Chinese run out of cheap aircraft...

\

Well no. No they won't. Have you seen our military budget? Have you seen our military technology? Are you not aware that the USA is the world's largest arms dealer? If we need extra aircraft all we have to do is stop selling them to everyone else.

to some extent it is very much a numbers game.

Yes, that's true. They can afford more losses, but we can deal out more losses.

If you feel that technology assures victory where is the Roman empire today?

Wishing they used less lead in their cosmetics.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[TheCarp]

Don't know what you are talking about, Rome fell when the republic died, and kings took power again.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, except Rome fell about 400 years later. You could argue that the decline of Rome began with the end of the Republic, but that decline was a drawn out process. It's more of an ideological point. The economically most prosperous years probably were under the Emperors...

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Roman expansion seemed to have stopped whenever they ran into cavalry-heavy enemies.

The Romans conquered the Persians at one point. Couldn't make it stick for more than a generation, but they managed.

They also conquered Spain and France. Against those barbarians that you think beat them.

The Romans did NOT successfully defeat the Germans, of course. Teutoberger Wald wasn't actually a case of "asymmetric warfare", since it involved a large Roman Army and a larger German Army (and a stupid Roman General, which was the real cause of the Roman defeat).

Of course the Romans never made a serious effort to conquer Germany. Why bother? The place was a worthless hellhole. Even Big Julie (who led punitive expeditions into Germany a couple of times) didn't think it was worth conquering. And the later Roman generals who led punitive expeditions into Germany whenever the Germans bothered the Romans living in France at the time didn't think Germany was worth bothering to conquer.

Not that they ventured often into those territories, but if I recall correctly, whenever they did, it was without significant success.

You don't recall correctly.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[SillyHamster]

Hitler did not initiate war with the US.

Hitler declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor.

Granted, it's not like the US was completely neutral up to that point, but changing it into open warfare was completely on him.

Xenon Released?

[Y-Crate]

This means we can finally get new Mac Pros!

I know what the bomb was made with

[Sparticus789]

Isn't it obvious? The NKoreans are all over THIS WEBSITE buying as much Uranium as they can!

Re:Nuke North Korea!

[interkin3tic]

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.

WTF is up with the flag?

[the_humeister]

A story about North Korea and you guys put a Japanese flag up?

Re:WTF is up with the flag?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Hell no, and it's not over now!

Why is this important data?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why is this important data?

[rasmusbr]

This may be a stupid question, but how do we know that North Korea didn't simply drill a hole, say 1000 meters deep, fill it with 7,000 thousand tonnes of chemical explosives and a liberal amount of electric detonators and blow that up to make it look like they have nukes?

Not How Nuclear Stuff Works

[Iskender]

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).

I still am not sure I'm convinced

[argStyopa]

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)