North Korea completed its sixth, and what many experts believe, its most powerful nuclear test to date.
The Duran reported that North Korean media had declared a successful test of a hydrogen bomb, a few short hours after announcing that the country’s military possess such a weapon which can be loaded atop the DPRK’s existing missile systems.
North Korea hailed the test as “success” and “meaningful step” in completing a the most powerful kind of nuclear weapon, apparently all from domestically produced components. North Korea also stated that the test was safe and that no nuclear material had leaked into the environment during the underground detonation.
The US, South Korea and China all confirmed the presence of a ‘man made earthquake’ emanating from North Korean soil which was confirmed as measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale.
Japan later stated that the earthquake which was ten times bigger than those resulting from previous North Korean subterranean bomb tests, had in fact been the result of nuclear activity.
While “the presence of a man made earthquake emanating from North Korean soil” has been fully confirmed, nuclear expert Alexander Uvarov believes North Korea might be bluffing about the type of bomb it tested.
Sputnik News reports…
North Korea claimed Sunday that it had successfully conducted a test of a hydrogen bomb, which had generated a 50 kiloton detonation, meaning that the blast was tantamount to exploding 50,000 tons of dynamite. The Japanese Defense Ministry later commented that the yield of the nuclear weapon that had been tested may have been as high as 70 kt, according to preliminarily estimates.
The bomb, it said, was designed to be mounted on its newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Alexander Uvarov, an editor-in-chief of the Russian website AtomInfo.ru, commented to Sputnik on the test, saying that judging by the announced yield of explosion (just a few dozen kilotons), it might have been not a thermonuclear device in the modern sense of the word, but a so-called “boosted device”, an atomic bomb that uses some hydrogen isotopes to enhance its explosive yield.
“It is a long-established physical principle, offered way back at the end of 1940s – beginning of 1950s, which became one of the stages of development of the thermonuclear programs of the USSR and the US,” he told Sputnik.
An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale centered in the area of North Korea’s nuclear weapons facility was followed by a 4.6 earthquake that appears to be a cave-in due to the bomb test.
What do you think?
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