6.3 mag Earthquake detected in North Korea

[Anomalocaris]

IIRC, it was Edward Teller, watching a seismograph in the US during the Ivy-Mike test commented "It's a boy"

I'd say his comment is applicable to this test too in view of the yield estimates ranging up to a megaton at this point. (which would be in the range of 10% of the yield of Ivy-Mike, the first 'true' hydrogen bomb test*)


It is significantly larger than their last test.


*as I recall, while their is no upper yield limit to a hydrogen bomb, atomic (fission) bombs larger than 500 kilotons aren't feasible. If this test is in fact approaching a megaton in yield, it is clearly an H-bomb, and a rather potent one at that.

Edward teller was as big a scheming, intriguing, self-serving and psychopathiic mad scientist as ever influenced a nuclear weapons program.  It wouldn't be too much to say Edward teller advocated for the doomsday hydrogen bomb and cunningly planted the seed of distrust of the motives of elite science in right wing policy circles that eventually mutated into the climate change denialism today, all to discredit Oppenheimer so he himself could usurp the leadership of America's atomic program during the early 1950s.

Ivy-mike was a colossal blunder where the bomb designer badly miscalculated the yield.  It was also not a self-contained bomb, but more like a small industrial plant.

Back to current event, the chinese, Japanese, and South Korean seismic agencies closest to the epicenter provides estimates of 50-120 KT.  If correct, that means this is probably not a true hydrogen bomb as Kim bragged, but either a pure fission bomb or slightly boosted fission bomb.

As to how North Korea is funding its weapons program, it is probably doing so by stripping its conventional weapons.  North Korea has a large arsenal of hand me down soviet era weapons.  But it has made precious few recent acquisitions.   Even so the funding is clearly inadequate:

1.  None of the 5 major nuclear powers has ever failed to correctly detonate their fission weapons on their very first try.   The 1st 2 North Korean weapon tests were both so weak they certainly were failed detonations.

2.  After the 8 years America took to go from the 1st fission to the 1st successful full fussion bomb, all other of the 5 big nuclear powers took less than 5.   North Korea has taken 11 and not yet exploded anything that is clearly a bonafides fussion bomb.

Clearly the NK program is far more troubled, for slower going, with far more false starts and half failed attempts, then the original programs at the start of nuclear weapons capabilities of the US, USSR, Britain, France and china.