N. Korea's Miniaturization of Nuke Possible in Near Future
Chia Head's been watching too many "Star Wars" movies...
Posted on 06/25/2010 7:12:21 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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N. Korea's Miniaturization of Nuke Possible in Near Future
2010.06.25 20:55
An argument is advanced which says that N. Korea could achieve miniaturization of nuclear warhead in near future.
There was a full hearing at Intelligence Committee of the National Assembly on June 25 where the Director of Defense Intelligence Agency, Hwang Won-dong, was present. When legislators asked whether N. Korea could attain the technical ability of miniaturizing nuclear warhead in a year or two, the agency replied, "We believe they can in near future," according to Assemblyman Choi Jae-sung, an executive member from Democratic Party.
The miniaturization implies that N. Korea could mount nuclear warhead on various types of missiles it has developed. Assemblyman Choi said, "According to my understanding, the miniaturization means the reduction of warhead weight from roughly 40 kg to 4kg. "
Previously, Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA,) a think tank for national security policies, put forth an analysis that the miniaturization of nukes by N. Koreans is not an impossibility and basically a matter of time." Agency for Defense Development also raised the possibility that N. Korea developed small nuke that can be mounted on Scud, Rodong, or Taepodong missiles.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.chosun.com ...
P!
A 4 kg critical assembly? I’m a little skeptical. The smallest USA deliverable device was a bit larger than this.
At 4 kg, you don’t need a missile, UPS or FedEx can deliver.
Baraq can buy a couple for the July 4 DC fireworks show!
Big enough to carry in a back pack across the southern border along with the drugs. The cartels have oodles of money to buy them, and the NK’s will gladly sell to them I’m sure. If not the Cartels, then the Al-Qaedes will light up our country. President Errrrr, will do errrrr, until the flash and noise starts and then he will do errrrrr waiting for his strings to be pulled. We are in more danger today than we were in the cold war. We are dealing with hostile factions not whole countries and we will soon experience mass destruction by people who don’t care about PC or the rules of engagement. You Liberal big city dwellers, you will be in the target zone, if I were you I’d worry big time. They don’t need to nuke a city, just mess up the power grid, say like in August. Get the idea?
I think you’re right. This has to be a typo or a mis-communication between the technical source and the reporter. What is the minimum critical mass of fissile material, even using highly enriched material? Then you need support structure, triggering chemical explosives, power, fuse, shielding (unless you’re willing to sacrifice your own people working around it), fuse/trigger safeties to prevent accidental or unauthorized detonation, protective shroud for atmospheric flight and re-entry. Your “physics package” has to be sturdy enough and supported well enough to survive movement (road/rail) from the final assembly point to the launch point. Pre-launch environment (rain/snow), the rigors of boost phase (shock/vibration, heating), brief space flight (cold, radiation), re-entry (high G loads, more vibration and heating)... You end up accumulating a fair amount of weight for your vehicle to carry down range.
The goal could be to frighten us, like the endless propaganda we used to get about “Soviet suitcase nukes”, then more recently, “A single EMP bomb could destroy US civilization so surrender now” stories that used to run every three months.
So now maybe it will be Korean bombs the size of softballs smuggled in kimchee jars.
a 4 Kg sphere of either uranium or plutonium would be 7 cm in diameter, just a hair under 3 inches in diameter.
so Rory leader can have a nuke football?
I think they mean the fissionable material need be only 4 kg, and not also including the surrounding charge, casing, timer, etc.
I think even for the USA such a tiny complete weapon would be impossible.
I think that even SADAM’s are 100 lbs or more.
But this still would be cause for dire concern, of course.
In fact 4Kg would not give the lowest overall weight. To get fission with that little Pu-239, the complete physics package would have to be much larger to get the maximum efficiency.
Thank you, something else to worry about and no, I am not surprised.
Ping.
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