Was It a Dud? Or a Fake?

[Update: Another vote for “dud.”]

More and more reports are suggesting that it was. From the beginning, the small size of the blast — smaller than any other first nuclear test — raised that question. Yesterday, Richardson posted about a report that the French had also declared the test to be either a dud or a fake. This report is more persuasive:

Four days after North Korea tried to set off its first nuclear bomb, U.S. intelligence agencies think the blast detected by seismic sensors was a plutonium-fueled device that did not fully explode.

“The working assumption is that what happened, more likely than not, was an attempted nuclear test that fell far short of being successful,” said one U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment.

The reports on what air sampling tells us are inconsistent. The Times quotes analysts who say we detected an incomplete detonation of a plutonium device, but this report says we detected no radiation.

“The initial test came back negative,” the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters of air sample testing.

The official said further analysis was being conducted, but “I doubt it will differ from the initial one.”

However, the official said U.S. intelligence experts were not ready to state that the North Korean test was nonnuclear or alternatively that it was a failed nuclear device.

The air samples were taken by U.S. Air Force planes and were later analyzed by U.S. experts for signs of radioactivity that would indicate that a nuclear explosion had occurred, the official said.

“It would be wrong of us I think to just go out and say with 100 percent clarity, ‘Due to no radiation being detected, therefore our conclusion is it was TNT or conventional explosives,”‘ the official said.

“You’ve got enough differing opinions out there saying, well, it was a failed nuclear device and that’s why you got the pop instead of the bang. So it’s going to be tough to come out and say that,” the official said.

The official said that the absence of detected radiation could mean several things, and noted that the North Koreans could argue that no radiation was detected because the nuclear test was conducted so skillfully that all the radiation was contained at the underground test site.

“Then you’ve got some of the scientists out there saying it’s very, very difficult to contain it all,” the official said.

So much for that clarifying moment I was hoping for. To add to it all, the Washington Times’s “Inside the Ring” column also reported that satellites caught North Korean technicians playing volleyball a few hundred yards from the test tunnel entrance. That would either demonstrate a reckless disregard for the safety of nuclear scientists and technicians, or that the test was a fake.

One of the reasons this is good news is that North Korea will likely test at least one more, meaning one less that can be used.