Reply #8: Half a kiloton is unimaginably huge

[daleo]

"Divine Strake" was planned to be about equivalent to half a kiloton. It would have been the largest conventional explosion in U.S. history. If North Korea can pull that off, they are making one mighty big boom.

Furthermore, they may have only used enough nuclear material to prove their nuclear capability to experts. It would make sense for them to want to preserve all the enriched uranium or plutonium as they could, for other bombs.

We may get a lot of propaganda about this not being a "real bomb", but I think that is just to minimize the psychological effect in the west now that the event has occurred.

"Codenamed 'Divine Strake', the test will not involve a conventional bomb as such, but will detonate a vast pile (amounting to 700 tonnes) of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) with 136 kg of C-4 explosive - the US equivalent of Semtex - as the initiator. As part of a series conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the explosion will be equivalent to more than half a kiloton or 500 tonnes of TNT, the largest conventional explosion to date."

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid060504_1_n.shtml