What did North Korea explode?
This morning’s “Mirror ” newspaper reported:
“Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il was yesterday accused of a brazenly defying the world after his country’s first nuke bomb blast. The huge 15-kiloton underground explosion – the same size as at Hiroshima – came despite international leaders pleading with him not to go ahead.”
However, the “Guardian” newspaper said:
“Its [North Korea’s] Central News Agency declared as a triumph the half-a-kilotonne explosion, thought to have taken place two kilometres down in an abandoned mine in the north-east of the country.”
It added:
“Early indications were that the blast was less than half as powerful as the bombs dropped by America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.”
As I boarded the London Underground this evening, I was given a copy of the free paper “The London Paper” which carries a story which states:
“US intelligence agencies have cast doubts over claims North Korea has produced its first nuclear blast. Official sources said preliminary seismic readings show conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off – but the readings fell short of a typical nuclear detonation.”
So there you have it: either it was a 15 kiloton device that was equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb or it was only a half kilotonne device that was less than half the power of the Hiroshima explosion or it wasn’t even a nuclear explosion at all. Where is James Bond when you need him?
Let’s hope that George Bush and other world leaders have learned the lesson of Iraq and establish the facts before determining what, if anything, needs to be done. This is already a very dangerous world – and it doesn’t need to be made even more dangerous.