According to both the Los Angeles Times and Wired.com's Dangerroom blog (that covers tech-related military and security issues), a more careful look at the data gathered about last night's North Korean nuclear test show the bomb was smaller than first estimated - less than a quarter of the initial estimate of a Hiroshima-sized 20 kilotons.
North Korea's first nuke test back in 2006 was finally estimated to be only about one kiloton - the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. The small size led many to speculate that the test bomb was largely a dud, but there was some thought that perhaps the North Koreans were just trying to make it look like they tested a nuclear device by packing an abandoned mine shaft with hundreds of tons of conventional explosives.
Last night's test is now estimated to be four times larger than the 2006 blast, coming in at about four kilotons, a large explosion no doubt, but still pretty puny by nuclear weapons standards. And Dangerroom points out that it is possible to create a similarly-sized boom with conventional explosives, the United States did just that with the "Minor Scale" test blast in 1985.
So are the North Koreans trying to fake a nuclear test (or perhaps fake a second nuclear test), or do they have a weapons program that's just not very good? It's yet another puzzle in a land full of mysteries.
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