North Korea, page-10

Getting back to NK and impact on REE. The deal was done in less than a day, with lots of preliminary work. It says nothing solid, just intent. Yes US shut down War games but this round was just about done. They can be restarted at any time we want, we changed nothing. NK did destroy their underground testing facility. Many people believe the last test had already destroyed it and their actions was just a sealing of the ruined and radioactive site. I have also read that the blast may have been bigger than expected. It was several times bigger than any Russia or US underground test.
I will use a drag race for an analogy of current agreement. Both people are still moving to the starting line. Lots of grandstanding, a few dramatic burn outs. Lots of noise. Hoods are up for final adjustments. But nothing has really happened. I am hoping there will be a great race. I hope this agreement will be a start for dramatic change. But we have to wait to see what will happen. Either party could withdraw from participating for reason will we never fully understand.

Bigger than expected. In every detonation some of the fuel is not consumed. It gets blown out of the core. This may have been NK first Hydrogen weapon. They could easily have miscalculated how much material actually was consumed. The reason the US and Russia agreed to go underground. Was they were both done making big bangs. Research moved to better triggers and ways to involve higher percentages of the material in the detonation, both could be done with small tests. Near end both countries were doing very small test. These were to prove computer models. The reason both countries agreed to a testing ban is confidence in models was very high. The reason the first two bombs dropped on Japan were so big and heavy is they used less than 1% of the material. If you want to send a bomb half way around the world in 30 minutes size and weight count.

Nk has the missiles, they have the bombs. I suspect the reason why negotiation is so important now is the bigger than expected explosion was actually a failure in that it did not go as planned. NK realizes it will take a lot to make a powerful bomb that can be carried on their missals to the US. The US and others know that if NK has an unexpected breakthrough they may be only a few tests away before NK figures out how to do this. It probably is not a single break through but lots of small ones.