A Nuclear Blast, a Failure, Or a Hoax?

Media reports are starting to echo thoughts I had when first learning of the tiny size of the North Korean atomic test.

"It was explosion-like … That's all we are saying," said an Australian Government source, who asked not to be named. "It could have been a small nuclear explosion, it could have been a chemical explosion." The blast was simply "too small to classify what caused it. Whether it was nuclear or not, we don't know."

Seismic waves recorded at several nuclear-test monitoring stations in Australia suggested the blast was probably equal to somewhere between 300 and 500 tonnes of TNT.

Small is not the word. Tiny is more like it. The bombs dropped on Japan during WW2 were rated around 20,000 tons of TNT, and are considered small by modern standards, where atomic weapons are measured in the millions of tons of TNT.

The North Korean blast was a mere fire cracker by comparison.

Whether it was a hoax or a failure is yet to be determined. American authorities are ...

... discounting some reports that North Korea had staged a hoax, trying to disguise a large conventional explosion as a nuclear blast ...

but

The Pentagon said it had dispatched planes carrying sensitive atmospheric sensors into international airspace along the North Korean coast, in hope of picking up a whiff of radiation vented from the test site. But so far, they said, none has been detected.

Until more analysis is done, the world media should temper its histerical reaction to the news of the North Korean 'atomic test.' It is playing into the hands of the North Korean regime as they revel in the exposure.

THE world's newest nuclear power, now brandishing a missile threat, wants to sit "face to face at the negotiation table with the United States".

A North Korean official in Beijing told South Korea's Yonhap news agency: "We want this situation to be concluded before the unhappy situation arises in which we fire nuclear missiles, and this depends on how the United States acts."

We should be wary of the warnings of Western governments who have a vested interest in keeping their populations feeling insecure, and the rantings of a small, impoverished, despotic nation that has not proven they have any real nuclear capability.

North Korea obtaining nuclear weapons is a serious development. However, given that the blast was likely a failure or even a hoax, and that there's a large technological leap between exploding a bomb and actually putting a working warhead on a missile, it's safe to take the view the threat is not as dire as that being depicted.