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At 21:39 -0400 10/9/06, Chuck Britton wrote:
The US did an underground blast in Mississippi that was less than
this 0.55 yield.
(local folks remember their wells being muddy for quite some time)
The first detonation, to form the cavity, code-named Salmon, took place
in 1964 using a 5.3 kiloton bomb, placed at the bottom of a sealed 2,710
foot shaft. The second nuclear blast, a relatively small 0.38 kilotons
yield shot code-named Sterling, was exploded within Salmon's 110 foot
diameter cavity more than two years later
http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/ludb/sites/MS3126.html
but this sub-critical mass needs a good tamper/reflector.
I'd wager that this was a fizzle rather than a sophisticated tiny device.
This means that they will be testing another one soon - fix things.
I agree with Chuck on this one. As John D has pointed out a "small" weapon, that is, less than one using a standard critical mass is an advanced concept, unlikely to have been the result of N. Koreas' first attempt at a nuclear weapon. And putting 500 or so tons of TNT into a cavity 1200 feet or so below ground, *and* fusing it so it will completely explode before it blows itself apart, would be a major effort, so it is unlikely that this explosion was a spoof. That leaves a fizzle as the most likely explanation for the small size of the detonation--unless everyone but the Russians is wrong about the strength of the seismic signal that was observed.
All told it seems that there is less than meets the eye in this event. One wonders if the outrage expressed around the world, although probably justified simply based on the attempt to detonate a nuclear device, really is taking the likelihood that the weapons was effectively a dud into account.
Hugh