Washington, Nov 09: North Korea has one or two
nuclear weapons similar to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the
US central intelligence agency has concluded.
North Korea has been able to validate its nuclear weapons
designs without a nuclear test, CIA told Congress, according
to an unclassified letter to the senate select committee on
intelligence in August.
The CIA believes, according to the letter, that
conventional explosives tests conducted by North Korea since
the eighties, have allowed the country to verify that their
nuclear designs would work.
It believes that North Korea has one or two nuclear
weapons similar to what America dropped on Hiroshima, Japan
during the Second World War. A minority of us intelligence
analysts believe North Korea may already have made more.
The relatively simple fission weapons North Korea is
believed to have produced would presumably detonate a
precisely built shell of conventional high explosives around a
plutonium core, and the tests may have involved the designs
for that shell.
The CIA has not publicised its communication to congress
but it was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists
which has now released the information. A CIA spokesman
declined to expand on the agency's conclusions.
Bureau Report
