North Korea's One Ton Bomb?
The Financial Times reports a North Korean defector claims "Kim Jong-il's regime has made a one-tonne nuclear bomb and is working on lighter weapons that could be fired more reliably, according to a South Korean magazine."
Is this plausible? Yeah, kinda.
I wrote a blog post about this a while back, as did my co-blogger Paul Kerr in Arms Control Today.
The unclassified testimony on North Korea and the CTBT suggests Pyongyang has "simple fission-type nuclear weapons ... validated ... without conducting yield-producing nuclear tests.â€
"Simple fission-type" is a term of art that means FRICKIN' HEAVY.
Not heavy like Liz Taylor, but heavy like the Nagaski device (left, with a friend), which weighed 9,000 lbs. In practice, "simple fission-type" means too heavy for a long-range ballistic missile, although the emminent John Holdren allowed that a new nuclear state might produce an unreliable warhead that needs testing in the 1,000–2,000 pound range.
Rowan Scarborough (of the Washington Times) reported on a classified DIA report that estimated the NORKs couldn't do better than 650-750 kg (1,400-1,700 lbs).
So, one ton is at the edge of plausible, but my guess is they aren't that good.
-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.
First of all, the only country they'd be using the bomb on would be either S. Korea or Japan. That whole area is not that big, and if any type of nuclear war began, Most of Western Asian would be FUBAR.
Posted by: GomeTang at July 21, 2005 4:47 PM