White House: 'The clock has now run out' on North Korean nuclear program

[Javaman]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/politics/white-house-north-korea-china/index.html

Washington (CNN)A senior White House official issued a dire warning to reporters Tuesday on the state of North Korea's nuclear program, declaring "the clock has now run out and all options are on the table."

"The clock has now run out, and all options are on the table," the official said, pointing to the failure of successive administration's efforts to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear program.

The comments came as two senior White House officials briefed reporters ahead of President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week in Florida. The briefing took place on the condition of anonymity.

US officials have grown increasingly wary of the pace of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs as the rogue regime has test-fired multiple ballistic missiles at a rapid clip in the first months of this year.

more at link....

_____________________

it's now official, we have a complete mad man in the white house.

[longship]

1. DPRK likely does not have a viable nuclear weapon.

Although they have made some tests, I suspect that none of them have the capability of even the Hiroshima bomb, let alone a signature that fission had actually happened.

Making an atomic bomb is very, very difficult. There are secrets about it that even now are kept under wraps. For instance, the initiator, a small, golf ball size device that is the trigger. If you don't get it right, your bomb fizzles -- no chain reaction. Now the existence of the initiator is well known. It's approximate make-up is even well known. But if one doesn't get it just right, your bomb goes fizz.

None of the DPRK nuke tests were of such a yield that they could not have been conventional explosives. I have no idea whether any of them had the characteristic nuclear explosion seismic signature.

Another issue. Testing a nuke and being able to deliver it as a weapon are two different animals. The term is to weaponize the bomb. One cannot just take a test bomb and strap it to an ICBM and deliver to a target. There is a whole lot of engineering between a bomb you blow up after just burying it, and one which can functionally survive after a ride after an inter-continental space trip.

I kind of doubt that they actually have a nuke, let alone a deliverable one.

[roamer65]

2. If there is war on the Korean Peninsula and nukes get used...

they won't be North Korean. They will be Chinese.

[longship]

5. And I doubt that, too.

The Chinese are too smart to use a nuke.

I am not sure about the DPRK, though. With wildly inaccurate missiles, and non-weaponized faulty nukes, they certainly could make a mess of things. I suspect the worst case scenario is a rather dirty bomb exploding (conventionally) somewhere unexpected, and untargeted. And no where near US territory.

But what to do in that case?

I don't think even Kim Jong Un is so stupid to try such a thing. But if pushed into a war, one cannot tell. That is why Drumpf is scaring the shit out of many people. He just might be stupid enough to try something.

[dalton99a]

4. It's likely that they don't have the proper hardware

to get the warhead to size. Their access to precision machining and high-speed fuses is questionable. People keep an eye on those suppliers pretty closely. And their rockets have a downright crappy record. Maybe the Chinese (or somebody) have been sabotaging their program by selling them crap.

[longship]

6. Plus, the trigger design is kept damned close to the chest.

Without that, you don't get a chain reaction.

[Thor_MN]

10. You seem to think that a chain reaction is difficult.

A chain reaction is guaranteed if you just put enough fissile material together. Keeping it together long enough to get a high yield is harder, but getting a chain reaction is just accumulating a critical mass - put enough stuff in one place = chain reaction.

[longship]

12. Nope!

The chain reaction depends on at least one slow neutron to initiate it. This is what Enrico Fermi discovered in his research. A fast cosmic ray neutron was not sufficient because it has the wrong cross section. The initiator ensures that a neutron of appropriate energy is introduced before the assembly can blow itself apart. That window of opportunity is measured in about a microsecond.

No slow neutron in that microsecond (or so) and the bomb blows itself apart before the chain reaction can get going. The bomb is a fizzle.

Nuclear physics 101.

Or read Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize winning history, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Highly recommended. Almost all explained therein. Plus, it's a fucking great read on history!

[ProfessorGAC]

18. One Thing To Keep In Mind, Longship. . . .

. . .that the cannon barrel "Little Boy" was not even tested. That's how sure the scientists and engineers were that a U-235 device of that design would work. They only tested the implosion, plutonium based (Fat Man) at Trinity because they weren't sure about that one.

The technology for that simple design is now 70+ years old. Now, i completely agree that making one light enough to put on a rocket is a whole other matter, since "Little Boy" still weighed a few tons.

So, i can see a scenario where they do have a workable fission device, but nothing they could put on a medium range ICBM.

[longship]

19. Yes, the Little Boy gun was certain to work from theory.

But it still had an initiator in two parts, one on the end of the bullet part and one inside the target. When bullet hits the target, at the instant of assembly, the initiator parts collide to provide a slow neutron or two to start the chain reaction. Without that element, the assembly blows itself apart before a chain reaction can start and the bomb is a fizzle. It does not go off (with the exception of the high explosives used to fast assemble the bullet with the target).

In the Fat Man the initiator was at the center of the plutonium implosion core. It gets crushed by the imploding core to provide the necessary slow neutrons at the precise instant of assembly. Again, without the initiator, the core just blows apart before it detonates.

No initiator. No nuclear detonation.

It really is simple.

[longship]

20. Maybe I've not kept up to date on DPRK tests.

But the yields I've heard of were all well within the range of conventional explosions. However, as I wrote above, any good seismologist could unequivocally state whether any of the tests included a nuclear detonation, as a nuke has a very unique and specific seismic signature. That data is determinative that a nuclear detonation occurred.

I have not heard of any such determination, so I am working from a position of ignorance here. But the seismologists in CA would know definitely whether the DPRK exploded a real nuke. If so, they don't seem to be discussing it, maybe with good reason.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. I Buy That

The short interval between initiation and peak is unmistakable. So, yeah, they would definitely know. But, i guess i'm still leaning toward that a gun barrel "little boy" nuke wouldn't need to be tested, as long as the U-235 purity is sufficiently high to prompt the ultra rapid chain reaction needed for full detonation. And, the uranium can be tested without making it into a device. It's either isotropically pure enough or it isn't. The purity required can be found in college textbooks.

[longship]

22. I with you on that.

Check out Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer winning book on the topic. It is a wonderful read.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

[dalton99a]

11. Yep.

They may have figured out something over the years - at great expense, and the Pakistani guy helped them quite a bit on the procurement side. But what they have is probably all dual-use, which is almost useless when it comes to building the damn thing. What they've done is a crude device (we know of three successful tests), and no one has confirmed their ability to execute or progress beyond that.

[longship]

13. I have not heard that they have a successful device.

The yields I have heard in the science press were really, really wimpy, well within the range of conventional explosives. And remember, like Dr. Strangelove said, when one is just going to bury a bomb there's no limit to the yield. So why have their tests been wimpy?

Second, a nuclear detonation has a very characteristic seismic signature which would be recognizable by any geologist who understands seismology. I am no expert in this, but as I understand it there are two peaks within a very short period of time. If one doesn't get the double peak, it's no nuclear explosion. That's the way I understand it.

I have no idea if any of the DPRK tests had this signature, but the yields that were cited were well within conventional explosive magnitude. That may tell us something right there.

[dalton99a]

14. Last I heard they did detonate something equivalent to the "Fat Man"

- as confirmed by U.S. Geological Survey sensors - which was a significant improvement from the first bomb about ten years ago.

[longship]

16. Well, then they are further than I heard a couple years ago.

Fat Man was a plutonium implosion device with a uranium tamper. An explosive lens collapses the tamper into the plutonium core symmetrically so the core is compressed to supercriticality, whereupon it crushes the elements of the initiator which triggers the requisite slow neutrons to start the chain reaction.

I am wondering where they are getting the super high quality capacitors to simultaneously trigger the explosive lens. And where they learned about initiator design.

These are not things that are shared.

My presumption with regards to the DPRK is that just about everything they say is rubbish. (Kind of like Drumpf.)

[Thor_MN]

7. Actually, making an atomic bomb is very easy.

Getting the materials is hard and making an efficient device that can be launched on a missile is difficult, but making a bomb is very easy.

Run a 6" pipe from the 4th or higher floor straight down to the basement. Being plumb counts. Put half of you fissile material in the bottom of the pipe. Fill the basement with concrete, put the other half at the end of about foot of 4" pipe and fill the rest with lead. Drop the weighted 4" pipe down the 6" pipe and kiss your ass goodbye, especially since you probably have already absorbed a fatal dose of radiation from handling the fissile materials.

One won't get a great yield with this, but a plumber is probably overqualified to build an atomic bomb - IF the materials are available.

As long as they have the materials they can build bombs. Building a missile capable bomb is a whole different beast and they probably are not very sophisticated there. But they have conducted numerous tests that would be very difficult to fake with conventional explosives that have been monitored with seismographs. Doubting they have actual nukes is whistling past the graveyard.

[longship]

15. Sorry, it will blow itself apart before the chain reaction begins.

Last edited Wed Apr 5, 2017, 01:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Without an initiator, you are not guaranteed a chain reaction because in the microsecond in which the super critical mass is assembled the chain reaction begins only if at least one neutron of the proper energy hits one of the nucleus. The super critical mass will blow itself apart faster than one could reasonably expect a neutron from a cosmic ray (for instance) to split one of the atoms.

Remember what Leo Szilard patented when he discovered the nuclear chain reaction. IF a single neutron splits a nucleus, AND IF at least two neutrons (of the appropriate energy) come out of that nucleus, THEN AND ONLY THEN a nuclear chain reaction will occur.

Without that first neutron at the precise point when the super critical mass is explosively assembled, the bomb fizzles. The chain reaction never gets going all the way before it blows itself apart. That's why all nuclear bombs have initiators.

Read the Rhodes book, cited above in another one of my posts. It's a great read. All is explained.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Hell of a way to distract from Russia Gate. n/t

[jesskirablue42]

8. time's up

wars are always a good distraction. One helluva way to wag the dog, though, might be more like grabbing the tiger by the tail, to do sme serious metaphor mixing.

[milestogo]

9. Thats exactly what he is trying to do.

[GeorgeGist]

17. Can't impeach a CIC ...

could well be what President Bannon has in mind.