Anchorwoman: American experts have analyzed that North Korea will go ahead with its seventh nuclear test to see if the tactical nuclear warhead it disclosed produces the expected explosive power. Reporter Lee Sang-min reports.
David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a prominent US nuclear scientist, told Free Asia Broadcasting (RFA) on the 29th, 'I recently met a Western intelligence source familiar with North Korean nuclear issues. He said he was confident he would do it.
He introduced, "This intelligence source said that the reason North Korea's 7th nuclear test is being delayed is that it took a long time to design the nuclear warhead to produce the expected explosive power."
Director Albright said, for example, that the nuclear warhead was designed to have an explosive force of 30 kilotons (kt.), but if only 5 kilotons were produced, it would fail. evaluated that there is.
A kiloton is a unit used to express the power of a nuclear bomb, and one kiloton corresponds to the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT gunpowder.
Director Albright : We need to be sure that this warhead produces the explosive power it was designed for. Experimentation is the only way to verify this.
Albright said, "This was not a problem when North Korea conducted nuclear tests in the past, but now it has changed after the North Korean authorities announced that they would use tactical nuclear weapons. It was emphasized that it should be shown.
Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at the Rand Institute in the US, also told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that day that nuclear scientists say that nuclear warhead manufacturing is not science, but art, because nuclear warheads must be elaborately manufactured with precise designs in order to produce the desired explosive power.
Researcher Bennett explained that the United States also conducted more than a thousand nuclear tests when manufacturing nuclear weapons, and that it was because they kept finding that some designs were wrong and did not work properly.
He said North Korea's last six nuclear tests had a large explosive force of more than 200 kilotons. To use it as a tactical nuclear weapon with a smaller explosive force, the design of the nuclear warhead must be changed and tests must be conducted to make sure it explodes accurately.
Researcher Bennett argued that in addition to these military purposes, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would conduct the seventh nuclear test for political purposes to show the world that North Korea is a nuclear power.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy Robert Super also told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that day that the US and the Soviet Union also conducted thousands of nuclear tests while continuing to modernize their nuclear arsenal. He said he would need to do it again.
On the other hand, Ollie Heinonen, a senior researcher at the Stimson Institute who served as deputy secretary-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that day, "North Korea has learned a lot from the past six nuclear tests, and India and Pakistan have only conducted six nuclear tests." It claimed that the possibility of additional nuclear tests is low.
He said that North Korea had already conducted a hydrodynamic test, which is the initial stage of a nuclear explosion, and that it would have secured data necessary for nuclear warhead design and miniaturization.
However, he said that if North Korea wants to develop a multiple warhead intercontinental ballistic missile, it will need a nuclear test to see if the multiple warhead design works.
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