fission bomb

To "permanently and completely dismantle all the nuclear material production facilities in the Yongbyon area" would therefore, ostensibly, cut off any further production of fissile material -- the essential component of a fission bomb. Like many others I do not believe that North Korea is sincere about giving up its nuclear weapons, and cynically view North Korean denuclearisation overtures as tools to milk concession from Washington.

Peter Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist and former chief scientist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said initial calculations based on seismic readings suggested a device with a yield of up to 200 kilotons - a destructive force 13 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and probably "too big for a pure fission bomb." Moreover, the prototype displayed by Kim on the eve of the test "pretty well shows they know the essentials of a thermonuclear device design," he said.

"The pictures show a more complete form of a possible hydrogen bomb, with a primary fission bomb and a secondary fusion stage connected together in an hourglass shape," Lee said.

"North Korea may push ahead with another nuclear test by detonating a stronger fission bomb before it holds its key party congress in May," Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the South Korean think tank Sejong Institute, said, according to Yonhap.

But even if the North exploded a boosted fission bomb, its explosive yield, estimated at 6.0 kilotons, showed the test was probably a failure, Seoul's Defence Ministry said.

16 ( ANI ): A Pentagon commissioned report has revealed that US' nuclear facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attacks which could potentially help the attackers build an improvised fission bomb.

In a fission bomb, a critical mass of fissile material is assembled from sub-critical masses by chemical explosives.

A team of Iranian scientists headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, the father of Iran's nuclear program, has been secretly testing a neutron detonator and implosion system, designing and building a nuclear warhead to arm Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile and working on separating plutonium for a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb.

Last month, the Doomsday Clock's hands were moved a minute closer to midnight by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the respected global organization that for decades has tracked the risk of a nuclear-weapons catastrophe, whether caused by accident or design, state or terrorist, fission bomb or dirty radiological bomb.

CANBERRA: Last month, the Doomsday Clock's hands were moved a minute closer to midnight by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the respected global organization that for decades has tracked the risk of a nuclear-weapons catastrophe, whether caused by accident or design, state or terrorist, fission bomb or dirty radiological bomb.

They are relying on the realities of the Turkish and Iranian roles, as the former has been deteriorating since the setback of the media confrontation with Israel (following the attack on the Freedom Flotilla) and the failure to promote Hamas's possible "rehabilitation" as a side in the negotiations, while the latter is closer to a fission bomb from whose fragments only Israel is spared, although Ahmadinejad promised us to wipe it off the map imminently.

by a hydrogen bomb, whose power significantly exceeds that of a fission bomb.