North Korea nuclear test: regime says it has successfully detonated hydrogen bomb
What we know so far
North Korea claims it has successfully detonated a miniaturised hydrogen bomb.
The underground test took place on Wednesday at 10am local time (1.30am GMT/Wednesday 12.30pm AEDT/Tuesday 6.30pm ET) at a known nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, in the east of the country. An announcement on state television claimed the test “worked perfectly” and was “self-defence against the US having numerous and humongous nuclear weapons”.
If true, this would be North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, and its first using a hydrogen bomb, significantly more powerful than an atomic bomb. There has been no independent verification of North Korea’s claims.
An artificial earthquake of magnitude 5.1 was detected close to Punggye-ri. The UN organisation monitoring the world for signs of nuclear testing confirmed it had detected “an unusual event in the Korean peninsula”...............
Should we believe North Korea’s claims to have tested a hydrogen bomb?
John Carlson, the former head of Australia’s nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation Office, said the veracity of the claim would be difficult to determine “until we can analyse any gases emitted, and it could take several days for those to show up, if it all”.
He said it would be a “major challenge” for the North Korean regime to develop a thermonuclear weapon, particularly a miniaturised version, which required even greater expertise. “Their claim would be far more convincing if it was a larger size,” he said.
Carlson, who headed Australia’s safeguards office for more than two decades, said it was possible Pyongyang had actually produced a lower-yield “boosted explosion”, in which the hydrogen isotope tritium undergoes partial fusion, allowing them to describe the device as a hydrogen bomb. “I think it’s feasible that they’ve done that and they’re claiming that they’ve done more,” he said.