RE: "Low Yield Of Blast Surprises Analysts"

Excerpt Washington Post article (title indicated above):

A senior intelligence official called it a "sub-kiloton" explosion detonated inside a horizontal mountain tunnel and said its low yield caught analysts by surprise. "For an initial test, a yield of several kilotons has been historically observed," the official said.

A U.S. government official said the North Koreans, in a call to the Chinese shortly before the test was conducted, said it would be four kilotons. The official said it is possible the explosive yield was as low as 200 tons. France and South Korea both issued sub-kiloton estimates, and officials dismissed as inaccurate an early Russian estimate that the blast resulted from a five-to-15-kiloton explosion.

President Bush said early yesterday that U.S. experts were "working to confirm North Korea's claim." By the end of the day, intelligence officials were still piecing together data and waiting to review intercepted communications that might shed light on what exactly the North Koreans set out to accomplish in the test and how it was conducted.

I was wondering last night if a nuclear test that only produced a 3.5 richter was anything to really boast about.

I should have written something so I could prove it.

We've have relatively small refinery explosions around here that have done more than 3.5 richter. (Small as in they didn't blow up an entire plant or even half of it.) (Actually, luckily we lived 15 miles away when those happened. I suppose I wouldn't be talking about them so calmly if I lived right next door. But what I'm saying is that we felt them 15 miles away, no special instruments needed. That is not the case with a 3.5 earthquake.)

So Jude Wanniski and Gordon Prather were not so far off saying that NK doesn't yet have the technology to properly explode Plutonium.

Still, even a couple of hundred TNT tons of exploding plutonium dropped into Seoul would be a major concern with the fallout I assume. This is not something they can fight off the US with, but still they could do enough damage to our allies nearby to deter us from military action.

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons also points the finger at John Bolton for screwing up the talks with North Korea.