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Purveyor

(29,876 posts)
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 11:30 PM Mar 2013

North Korean Secrecy On Bomb Test Fuels Speculation On Nuclear Advances

By Joby Warrick, Sunday, March 31, 8:12 PM

U.S. officials and independent experts say North Korea appears to have taken unusual steps to conceal details about the nuclear weapon it tested in February, fuelingsuspicions that its scientists shifted to a bomb design that uses highly enriched uranium as the core.

At least two separate analyses of the Feb. 12 detonation confirmed that the effects of the blast were remarkably well contained, with few radioactive traces escaping into the atmosphere — where they could be detected — according to U.S. officials and weapons experts who have studied the data.

U.S. officials anticipated the test and monitored it closely for clues about the composition of the bomb, which was the third detonated by North Korea since 2006. The first two devices were thought to have used plutonium extracted from a dwindling stockpile of the fissile material that North Korea developed in the late 1990s.

A successful test of a uranium-based bomb would confirm that Pyongyang has achieved a second pathway to nuclear weapons, using its plentiful supply of natural uranium and new enrichment technology. A device based on highly enriched uranium, HEU, also would deepen concerns about cooperation between the hermetic regime and Iran.

MORE....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korean-secrecy-on-bomb-test-fuels-speculation-on-nuclear-advances/2013/03/31/f46bda44-98ae-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html

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North Korean Secrecy On Bomb Test Fuels Speculation On Nuclear Advances (Original Post) Purveyor Mar 2013 OP
It's really difficult to hide enrichment. longship Apr 2013 #1

longship

(40,416 posts)
1. It's really difficult to hide enrichment.
Mon Apr 1, 2013, 12:20 AM
Apr 2013

There's basically no chemistry to enrich uranium, it has to be done by mass and U238 and U235 differ by only a trivial amount. Enriching uranium enough to produce bombs takes kind of big shit.

I don't think DPRK is doing anything the US doesn't know, no matter what the WaPo says.

R&K

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