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Subject: North Korea may have eight nuclear bombs
corona_fx    4/28/2004 8:20:59 AM
WASHINGTON, April 28: The United States is coming to the conclusion that North Korea could have at least eight nuclear weapons instead of possibly two. The revised estimate, to be included in a report to be completed within a month, is based on a detailed analysis of plutonium products found on clothing worn by an unofficial US delegation that was allowed to visit North Korean nuclear facilities several months ago, US officials preparing the report told the daily. (AFP)
 
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Roman    RE:North Korea may have eight nuclear bombs   4/28/2004 2:13:53 PM
"The revised estimate, to be included in a report to be completed within a month, is based on a detailed analysis of plutonium products found on clothing worn by an unofficial US delegation that was allowed to visit North Korean nuclear facilities several months ago, US officials preparing the report told the daily." Bloody hell! Are the intelligence guys really that good?!?! Still, the finding is worrying!
 
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Final Historian    RE:North Korea may have eight nuclear bombs   5/2/2004 3:49:33 PM
That is BS. The means of detecting it, that is. I can tell that much... As for the numbers, remember that is "at least." I suspect the real numbers are a fair bit higher. Which is extremely worrying. Damn it, we could have done something back in '94. Now they have enough bombs, and enough long range missiles, that we likley can't take them all out in a pre-emptive strike.
 
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displacedjim    RE:North Korea may have eight nuclear bombs   5/2/2004 6:15:20 PM
Take heart, Final. I'm thinking there's some pretty big differences between having a nuclear device from having an air-deliverable nuclear bomb from having a nuclear reentry vehicle small enough to fit inside a not-real-big ballistic missile. On top of that, there's only a couple places in North Korea that can erect, prepare, and launch such a missile; it wouldn't be much trouble keeping them under surveillance and within striking distance 24/7. If we wanted to pound North Korea's nuclear weapons capability, we could do so with a moderate level of precaution regarding their ability to strike back with MRBMs. Unfortunately, there's still the odd nuke-in-the-containerized-cargo option that would require some pretty serious intelligence collection vigilance. Still, I'm sure that's do-able as well, as I doubt there's an insurmountable level of cargo shipments coming out of the wasteland called North Korea. Displacedjim
 
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OplotMira    RE:North Korea may have eight nuclear bombs   5/23/2004 10:08:58 AM
Consider that the North has one of the world's most dedicated and well-trained Special Forces corps. Maybe the do not even need these long-range missiles. Maybe nukes are already smuggeled in to Seoul and western capitals by special operations teams, waiting for the go-ahead from Kim. I for my part, think the NKs are bluffing. If they are not bluffing, why don't they do a little test or show them of at a parade or something to really confirm their membership in the Nuke-Club? Sincerely OplotMira
 
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elcid    Final, go read a good book   5/29/2004 9:26:37 PM
You "can tell" the story is wrong, but you are wrong. We know a lot from IAEA being allowed to swab cleaned components in the 1990s. Turns out every reactor has a unique "signature" and even very tiny traces of the material from one allows one to tell a great deal - even what part of the reactor it was from. Read Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears for a fair discussion of this, or read The Two Koreas.
 
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elcid    All the assumptions about the bombs must be big are wrong   5/29/2004 9:34:20 PM
It is astonishing how many people think a third world bomb design must be like our first ones were. In not one case has this been true. Further, North Korea surely had access to the same PRC design we found in Lybia, which had arrived there via Pakistan. Nuclear staff of these countries were mainly trained in Europe, some in the USA, and they know a lot of things we did not know in the 1940s. Any good tech is up to doing this fairly well, and one Junior college student prooved it. This year, the US Senate told the weapons labs to build a nuclear weapon with off the shelf, legal, industrial parts, and they did in a short time. It was "bigger than a breadbox" - but they got it in the hearing room. Third world weapons are going to be smaller than what you can build with parts from regular industrial suppliers. We built a fission weapon with a core "about the size of an orange" in 1962 - which was a long time ago. We fit some inside 155 mm shells. Only arrogance explains the assumption no one can do the same as we could a generation ago. It is false. No actual design we are aware of is half the assumed size - and the only large one at all is the South African bomb - which was very conservative and made by a country with almost unlimited uranium reserves. [It was to be "delivered" by C-130 no less.]
 
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