According to this Reuters story, IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei said to CNN (regarding the possibility of the blast being of nuclear origin):
Is it possible that a nuclear explosion that raised a debris cloud kilometers across would have no radioactive material detectable by atmospheric sampling once the winds brought remnants of the cloud across the border?
Is the implied demand for on-site inspection based on science, or does it reflect a political agenda?
Finding certain radioactive isotopes in the debris cloud would absolutely confirm the nuclear nature of the explosion. Not finding them could leave some doubt. If the test was underground, then the debris might just be dust from the surface and not be made up of any of the material from the blast itself.
It seems a stretch that dust from the surface could make up that large a cloud in the first place.
And if it was an underground nuclear test, how would an on-site inspection be assured of getting samples from deep enough to confirm or deny it? Who’s to say that they didn’t simply dig a hole considerably deeper than striclty necessary so the evidence would be buried deeper than expected?
There was a mushroom cloud reported, so I don’t think that it was an underground explosion, as it seems to me that the entire point of having the underground nuke test would be lost if it was close enough to the surface to make such a cloud.
As for the missing radiation, the (still debated, probably S. African) Vela nuclear test never produced any clear radioactive signature, but that was an atmospheric test over the Indian Ocean, not an “on the ground” test in a populated country between two other populated countries with a nearby US navel fleet and about a thousand spy sattelites and aircraft above it as is the case with N. Korea, and so only proves that its vaguely conceivable that radiation from a nuke test could be undetected in some cases.
My official guess: they were testing a MOAB type bomb, which is a conventional weapon that does produce a mushroom cloud.
Its political, but not sure of the axis of the demand.
They have a nuclear program ongoing , this may be a way of getting in to see whats really been going on.
It may also be expected that the North Koreans will deny any demand for onsite verification or investigations , thus the security council will enact sanctions and what not.
For the North Koreans , this is gonna be a lose/lose situation.
Declan
Wasn’t the South African thing in the early 80s? I always assumed that the US didn’t want proof of a nuclear event involving S. Africa and Israel. The Reagan administration was resisting Congressional pressure for sanctions or other acts aginst the the Botha government of the time.
Has the South African government officially acknowledged that the test took place? Maybe the Mandela government would be more forthcoming than Botha’s.
More info on the Vela incident.
The gist is that, yes, the US gov’t did try to obfuscate whether or not it was an actual nuke test, but they were aided by the fact that results for tests of fallout were ambiguous, since fallout is the one “smoking gun” indicator of a nuclear detonation (seismic activity and satellite data indicated the test did occur). That said, the fact that many nuke experts still hold that this was an actual test makes me think that it isnt completely inconceivable that one can have a test without detectable fallout.
Boyo Jim, the S. African’s have not stated uniquivcally that it was their test, the article I linked to gives several theories about it being S African, Israeli or both.
Maybe if you detonated a small (~20kT) nuke under a 60 meter thick sheet of vulcanized rubber that had been piled liberally with talcum powder? We all know that Kim Jong Il is crazy, but is he that crazy?
As far as fallout from an above ground explosion, as this must have been, the Chinese conducted a 300kT test in 1967 that contaminated cows in Tennessee with radioiodine. (Not the best link in the world, but I remember the stir it caused when the cloud went over. The US had ratified the Atmospheric test ban treaty in 1963.)
It defies common sense that a nuclear ground burst in North Korea would not have set off geiger counters in Japan by now.
I think it was a matter of hours , before sweden realized something was very wrong about the quality of air , days before the soviets owned up to the fact that chernobyl had gone wonky.
Yes , we would have heard by now.
Declan