Official: No Radioactive Particles Found (but does NOT mean there was not

[rodeodance]

a nuclear explosion.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/13/AR2006101300576.html

Official: No Radioactive Particles Found

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Friday, October 13, 2006; 12:22 PM

WASHINGTON -- Results from an initial air sampling after North Korea's announced nuclear test showed no evidence of radioactive particles that would be expected from a successful nuclear detonation, a U.S. government intelligence official said Friday.

The test results do not necessarily mean the North Korean blast was not a nuclear explosion, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the sampling results.


The U.S. government remains uncertain of the nature of the underground explosion, although the air sampling tends to reinforce earlier doubts about whether the test blast was entirely successful, officials said. Data from seismic sensors indicated the explosion was smaller than expected.

The air sample was taken Tuesday by a specialized aircraft, the WC-135, flying from Kadena air base in Okinawa, Japan. It apparently took the sample over the Sea of Japan, between the Korean mainland and Japan.

[truthisfreedom]

1. probably just TNT. as i suspected from the outset. very small yield=fake

ploy to embarrass the administration. oh well. at least bushco isn't using this much.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Sure.

Just ten thousand tons of TNT.

:eyes:

[SaveElmer]

2. Until there is any proof of a test...

There wasn't one...

Blast strength was apparently too small to be nuclear and no radiation detection.

Either the detonation blast occurred and failed to yield a nuclear chain reaction...or the whole thing was a fake!

[Oak2004]

6. It wasn't too small to be nuclear, but it was too small to be a bomb that

really worked.

You can make some relatively low-yield nuclear devices, well into the conventional explosives range, but it's doubtful that that's what N. Korea wanted to engineer. Either it is faked (not at all improbable) or its a fizzle (we've had tests fizzle on us, too: June 1957's Franklin test, for example, had a yield of only 140 tons). A fizzle *is* a nuclear explosion, just not a very successful one.

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

11. How Many N Korean scientists

Are going to "fizzle" when the failed test embarasses Dear Leader, claiming he has anuclear bomb when one doesn't work.


Logic would say they were not going after a tactical nuke, but a big one that could take out a city, say Seoul or Tokyo. Aren't smaller yield nukes harder to build anyway?

[Oak2004]

15. Yep, big and crude is a lot easier

Something roughly like the bombs we used in WWII is what you'd expect a new nuclear power to produce (though I would think the bomb was of a slightly more advanced design, probably a uranium implosion device).

The uranium bomb we dropped on Hiroshima (a gun-type, not an implosion, device) is so easy to make that we didn't even test the uranium bomb before we used it (scientists were certain it would work) but there are numerous disadvantages with the gun-type design, so it's rarely if ever used today; implosion devices, like the one tested at Alamagordo and dropped on Nagasaki, or like most if not all modern fission weapons are trickier to make. My guess is that the device was an implosion device modeled after the Pakistan bomb, and the implosion timing was a bit off.

[Ediacara]

7. It wasn't too small to be nuclear

It was just a very small nuclear bomb (if it actually was a nuclear bomb). The yield of about 2 kt is in the range of what the Administration calls "tactical" nuclear weapons. I don't know why the media continues to claim it was 0.5 kt or smaller because the magnitude of earthquake indicates it had to have been 2 kt or greater.

[SaveElmer]

8. I was going by the reports of the smaller number...also

That NK apparently warned China that a 4 Kt bomb would be tested....

Still no actual evidence of a nuclear explosion however

[Ediacara]

9. I think that if it was a nuke, it didn't go as planned

Especially if the North was expecting a 4 kt explosion, but I have no idea why a 0.5 kt number keeps popping up in the media when the data says it was bigger.

You are certainly correct there's no data it was actually a nuke, as any of these numbers are within the range of a very big conventional explosion.

[Opusnone]

14. By Rummy's standards if you can't find it, then it must be true

that was his early cold war argument on secret Russian weapons programs.

[daleo]

3. Why would anyone believe the U.S. government on this?

After all, they claimed to see WMD where there were none. It makes sense that they would claim to not see them where they were.

On edit - Especially with a U.S. election only a month away.

[Zenlitened]

5. So let's sum up the options. 1) North Korea has gone nuke on Bush's watch

.. or 2) Bush has bungled everything so badly that America is now being punk'd by a little shit-heel dictator, and there's not a thing we can do about it.

Way to go, neo-cons.

America was getting punk'd by a shit-heel named Saddam Hussein for a while, too.

Could have just swatted him like a fly, instead of destroying our military primacy by falling flat on our faces in front of the whole wide world.

Then the rest of the punks might be a little less bold today, no?

:grr:

[jman0]

10. If it was just TNT then why are they pushing for Sanctions?

Surely it's not a crime to blast some TNT in your own country?

[ngant17]

12. what if it was a nuetron bomb

which has an even highter signature for radioactivity. The government is always telling us the opposite of what the reality is.

China has developed the technology to build and deploy the neutron bomb for at least 20 years. China could use N. Korea to test its weapon systems, so everyone can blame it on N. Korea.

[KoKo]

13. Why would they expect particles to be found over the Sea of Japan

when it was supposed to be an "underground explosion." Aren't we told by our won Govt. that when we do underground testing there's no radiation leak at all? :eyes:

Sounds to me like Bushies now on board with it being just a "fake test" to cover his butt for doing nothing. We will never know if it was real or not given the quality of both governments reporting to their people.