Another Nuke Test in North Korea? at No Man’s Blog

Why not?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports that the United States conducted a total of 1,030 nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1992. The Soviet Union, the Bulletin reports, conducted a series of 715 tests that ended in 1990. Other totals are listed as follows:

France: 210
United Kingdom: 45
China: 45

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) says that Pakistan conducted six nuclear tests within a three-day period at the end of May 1998. This came mere days following an Indian announcement that it had conducted three nuclear tests of its own. This The infamous Atomic Clock information is basically confirmed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, although their report includes some ambiguity in regard to the number and/or type of weapons detonated in South Asia. So the North Korean nuclear testing program would be the exception to the rule were it to stop after only one test. That would especially be the case if the test turned out to be a dud (as many are suspecting). If the test really was a fizzle, North Korea should be expected to conduct more detonations in order to resolve any technical issues that may have surfaced as the result of the initial test.

And was the first North Korean test really a fizzle, as many experts expect? According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Indians claim that one of the devices they tested Mushroom Cloud in 1998 was a low-yield (sub-kiloton) device of the order of 200 tons of TNT (which sounds awfully similar to assessments of the recent North Korean test). I don’t think it would be surprising at all if North Korea elected to test a smaller bomb instead of a larger one. All you have to do is take a glance at a map of the country to appreciate the territorial constraints they have to contend with. They simply don’t have any wide open desert space to use as a site for testing multiple-kiloton devices. (In the case of Great Britain, a country that faces similar territorial constraints, all underground testing was conducted in the United States; in the case of France, all testing was conducted on the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa in French Polynesia.) Besides, there’s always the possibility that they want to limit the amount of fissile material they expend on testing and save the rest for real-world deterrent bombs or warheads.