North Korea panics the world, but ‘H-bomb’ test changes little
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Virginie Grzelczyk, Aston University
North Korea has conducted its sixth nuclear device test, and based on what we know so far it looks like by far the biggest yet. Pyongyang’s own news agency, KCNA, described the test as a “perfect success”, and claimed the device was an advanced hydrogen bomb small enough to fit atop a long-range missile.
Though it’s still too soon to confirm whether that’s true, whatever the north tested was clearly much larger than its previous devices. Seismic readings detected the blast via a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, and Norway’s NORSAR seismological observatory suggested the explosive yield would translate to a massive 120 kilotons.
After an extremely tense few months of tough rhetoric, missile launches, military exercises and troop movements, it seems North Korea has come very close to achieving what it’s always said it was after: a viable missile-borne thermonuclear deterrent. So has the time finally come to run for the bomb shelters?
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