North Korea nuclear test - Fizz, not pop
 

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the North Korean bomb is now estimated at 4% of the power of the Hiroshima bomb. What this means, kids, is that the nuke test was a failure. They didn't hold the plutonium together and the bomb started breaking up before a full chain reaction started.

2 bomb types: Uranium and Plutonium.

Uranium: Easier to make a bomb, but very difficult to make bomb grade material.
Plutonium: Easier to make and separate the material, much more difficult to make a bomb work.

Little boy was a uranium bomb. It was approximately 16 kilotons.

Trinity and Fat Man were plutonium bombs. Trinity was better than 90% conversion. They both were approximately 20 kilotons.

This means that the North Korean test had under 3% conversion.

It's still good enough to sell to Iran...

Either that or it was a Suitcased size Bomb. Meant for Terrorist work.

They are saying it might have been dynamite tarted up to look like a "bomb".

A failed nuke to go with their failed missle launches.

it was .65 kilotons or equal to 1.3 million pounds of TNT.

The problem with detonating 1.3M lbs of conventional explosive is that the shockwave sets of the rest, so the time of the explosion is longer than a nuke.

.65 kilotons, while a fizzle, is still about 25 times what our biggest conventional bomb will produce. The MOAB

The Iranian one (on its way) won't be a dud.

Still a nuke ... scary.

I cannot wait until the 'next test' goes wrong thanks to the (secret) intervention of a Spec Ops Group from any country (or a combined one) ... that will be fun to see on CNN ...

What makes you think that? The Iranians have a long way to go to produce weapons grade Uranium. I expect they will use the power plant grade material to produce plutnoium and will have similar results to the North Koreans.

Re: North Korea nuclear test - Fizz, not pop
 

Good enough for terrorist-government work -- an efficient "clean" bomb would just knock down buildings and kill people quick; an inefficient "dirty" bomb will leave lots of radioactive fallout and kill lots of people slowly and make the locations it was detonated near uninhabitable for years.

A poorly detonating (or intentionally manufactured "dirty") nuclear bomb worries me a lot more than a clean, efficient nuke.

It take a lot more than a few pounds of plutonium to do that.