North Korea's Nuclear Warhead Is Reportedly Lighter and More Powerful

North Korea's latest nuclear test, as captured by seismic monitors in South Korea. Image: Lee Jin-Man/AP

North Korea has been on a bit of an aggressive bent lately, and the country just pushed things to a new level by reportedly conducting its third nuclear test. Pyongyang has been expected to conduct a test to follow up on its previous tests in 2006 and 2009, and last night a magnitude 5.1 earthquake in northeast North Korea signaled that the country had indeed gone ahead with detonating a new bomb.

Some previously argued that a test wouldn't be a bad thing as we'd get a chance to see how far North Korea's nuclear tech has progressed. The 2009 test, which created an earthquake of similar magnitude, was estimated to have a yield of 2 to 6 kilotons, and early estimates for the current test are a yield at the high end of that range, if not a bit higher. For comparison, the Times notes that the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. So, while basing the yield on the magnitude of a quake is inexact and dependent on geology, it doesn't appear that North Korea has made a huge leap forward in their nuclear arsenal.

But there is one worrisome note: North Korea's KCNA state news agency reported that the bomb used was a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously.” Now, KCNA reports should be taken with a grain of salt, and saying "smaller, lighter, and more powerful" could apply to an incremental or large change. But one thing has changed since 2009: North Korea, which has long been held back as an aggressor by not having the missile tech to deliver a payload very far, Pyongyang has now sent a rocket into space. Its rocket program appears to be fairly robust, and even if its nuclear devices aren't world-crushingly powerful, "smaller and lighter" means that the country is closer to having actual ICBMs.

Continue reading over at Motherboard.