North Korea's 'hydrogen bomb' was most likely a 'boosted' fission device.

[LongTomH]

The NBC News story North Korea's Hydrogen Bomb Proclamation: 5 Things You Should Know contained these statements from Francois Heisbourg, "a special adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research."

"It doesn't have a nuclear arsenal — it has the ability for the time being to produce nuclear devices which it knows how to detonate," Heisbourg said. "It is not yet clear that it has the ability to operationalize these devices so that it can be put on top of a rocket and shot at somebody."

Still, Heisbourg said that North Korea is "on their way" to acquiring that capability.

"It's a question of years it's not a question of decades," he said.

So what really went BANG at NK's testing ground?

More likely, he said, was that North Korea had tested a "boosted device" on Wednesday — something "halfway between an ordinary Hiroshima or Nagasaki-type atomic weapon" and an H-bomb.

A boosted nuclear device is a fission bomb with a mix of deuterium and tritium (heavy isotopes of hydrogen) gases injected into the hollow, plutonium 'pit. The deuterium-tritium fuses when the bomb goes off. The fusion reaction doesn't contribute significantly to the explosion itself; what it does is release energetic fusion neutrons which speed up the fission reaction, causing a significantly higher ratio of the plutonium to undergo fission.

Most modern nuclear bombs use some sort of fusion boosting.



A true 'hydrogen bomb' has a fusion secondary (actually a fission-fusion hybrid).

[Octafish]

1. Oh. So THAT's what all the plutonium's for.

Dunno if they have polystyrene in North Korea.

Thank you for the heads-up, LongTomH. Fascinating subject. Wish it were relegated to history, though.

[Brother Buzz]

2. Perhaps they harvest polystyrene from the beach

[Octafish]

3. Awful for the planet. And it makes an awful noise.

If only there were a better way...