Doubts Grow As To Whether Nork Detonation Was Nuclear

A crazy, pajama-wearin' blogger questioned this yesterday.

Now "some analysts" question this as well.

THERE were increasing doubts yesterday about the strength of North Korea's claimed nuclear test, with some analysts questioning whether the device worked properly or whether it was a nuclear weapon in the first place. A successful nuclear test would be expected to have the same force as between 10 and 60 kilotons of high explosives but experts doubted the explosion was even one kiloton.

"We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion," The New York Times quoted one intelligence official as saying yesterday. "We don't know, in fact, whether it was a nuclear explosion."

Philip Coyle, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the US Government's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told the Times the unimpressive size of the test suggested it was only partially successful.

"Now, maybe they intended to make it small, and perhaps they did, who knows?" he said.

"But if it turns out to be a kiloton or less, that would suggest that they hoped for more than that and didn't get it."

A reader who doesn't want to be identified says, "This is real damning testimony to how harmful socialism is: Half a century of Marxism can cause even Asians to flunk a science test!"

posted by Ace at 11:16 AM

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