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

[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.