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SEOUL, May 25 (Reuters) - North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a ruling party official as saying.
YTN Television quoted the South Korean weather agency as saying it detected a tremor indicating a test at 0054 GMT.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers over the test, Yonhap said.
North Korea had recently said it would again test a nuclear device -- its first was in October 2006 -- in reaction to tightened international sanctions after it fired a long-range rocket in April.
News of the test hit South Korean financial markets, sending the main KOSPI share index down four percent in late morning trade, while the won dropped more than 1 percent against the dollar.
The North gave no details of the test location, but South Korean officials said that a seismic tremor was detected in the north-eastern part around the town of Kilju - the site of North Korea's first nuclear test. The US Geological Survey said a 4.7-magnitude quake was detected at 0054 GMT, 10km (six miles) underground. Geological agencies in both South Korea and the US said the tremor indicated a nuclear explosion.
Geological recordings of the tremor suggest it was much larger than the 2006 test. That was backed up by the Russian defence ministry, which detected a blast of up to 20 kilotons - comparable to the American bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way as requested by its scientists and technicians.
"The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control and the results of the test helped satisfactorily settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology.
"The successful nuclear test is greatly inspiring the army and people of the DPRK all out in the 150-day campaign, intensifying the drive for effecting a new revolutionary surge to open the gate to a thriving nation.
"The test will contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism and ensuring peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and the region around it with the might of Songun."
France and Pakistan are negotiating a partnership including nuclear cooperation and French president Nicolas Sarkozy could travel to Pakistan in the autumn to sign a deal, a source close to Sarkozy said on Monday
The source said Zardari had been informed of that. The idea of striking a similar deal with Pakistan as the Indian agreement is likely to raise fears that sensitive technology could leak out once again.
The concerns about North Korean weapons proliferation were heightened this week with Pyongyang's underground test of a nuclear weapon and several short-range missile launches. Sales of short- and medium-range missile systems remain among North Korea's largest export earners, part of an arms trade that generates $1.5 billion annually for Pyongyang, say North Korea analysts.
In August, the U.S. worked with India to block a North Korean Air Koryo jet from flying to Iran from Myanmar on the belief it was carrying missile components; the intercepted jet flew back to Pyongyang. A diplomat at Myanmar's U.N. mission declined to comment Wednesday. Iran has in the past declined to discuss any allegations of arms deals with North Korea.
This Tibor Toth seems to be a useful idiot who is divorced from reality. And is spinning away bathroom assurances. There wont be any chain reaction which itself is an inflammatory term to use.
“The threat is elevated and Japan should seek to arm itself with nuclear weapons,” former Japanese air force chief Toshio Tamogami said in one of two recent interviews.
Shingo Nishimura, who resigned in 1999 as a deputy defense minister after calling for a nuclear debate, praised Tamogami for speaking out. “Japan is shifting from an abnormal situation to a normal one,” said Nishimura, 60, a lower-house lawmaker. “We should make a defense strategy assuming there’s no such thing as a U.S. nuclear umbrella.”
After four years of construction and thousands of recorded defects and deficiencies, the original €3 billion, or $4.2 billion, price tag on the Olkiluoto reactor has climbed at least 50 percent. The reactor was supposed to be completed this summer, but work is so far behind schedule that Areva, the French company building the facility, and Teollisuuden Voima, the utility that ordered it, no longer are willing to predict with certainty when it will go online.
A clone of the Finnish reactor now under construction in Flamanville, France, is also behind schedule and over budget, raising doubts about the industry’s contention that standard designs lead to lower costs as more reactors are built.
Of the 45 reactors being built around the world, 22 have encountered construction delays and nine do not have official start-up dates.
Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as €6 billion, double the price offered to the Finns. But Areva said it was not cutting any corners in Finland. The two sides have agreed to arbitration, where each seeks more than €1 billion in damages.
If a global nuclear test ban pact were now in force, a test like the one North Korea says it conducted on Monday would trigger an on-site inspection, according to the U.N.-affiliated organization that is preparing for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Israel Shouldn't Sign the NPT
By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
The newest nuclear and missile testing are an unmistakable slap at President Obama's call for broader dialogue. What's also particularly galling to U.S. officials is that Pyongyang signed the Nuclear Treaty and then proceeded to render it virtually meaningless. Meanwhile, treaty signatory Pakistan followed signatory India in unleashing the nuclear genie on the Subcontinent while doing nothing as Sir Ahmad Khan proliferated nuclear weapons technology from Tehran to Pyongyang. Today, the world is left to hold its collective breath as the Taliban nips at the gates of Islamabad--too close to Pakistan's growing nuclear arsenal
Nuclear powers broke more than a decade of deadlock on Friday by agreeing to restart arms control talks in the Conference on Disarmament, the United Nations and diplomats said.
Each group will work at different levels of intensity ranging from full "negotiations" for the fissile ban to discussions or "exchange of views" on other issues for now, according to the UN summary.
Indian ambassador Hamid Ali Rao said that New Delhi supported the work plan and negotiations on a verifiable Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty. "While joining the consensus on the programme of work, we wish to place on record our disappointment that the conference could not decide on launching negotiations on nuclear disarmament," he said Friday, expressing the hope that those talks would evolve.
U.S. nuclear engineers found they could not create new Fogbank with the same qualities as those produced in the 1970s and 1980s, congressional investigators said in a March report.
"I don't know how this happened that we forgot how to make Fogbank. It should not have happened, but it did," said Philip Coyle, a former assistant defense secretary who also held a senior position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
In 2000, NNSA considered replacing Fogbank with an alternate material that was less costly and easier to produce but abandoned the idea because NNSA was confident that it could produce Fogbank since it had done so before. In addition, LANL's computer models and simulations were not sophisticated enough to provide conclusive evidence that the alternate material would function exactly the same as Fogbank. Still further, the Navy, the ultimate customer, had expressed a strong preference for Fogbank because of its proven nuclear test record.
In March 2007, however, NNSA again considered producing an alternative material when it was unable to produce usable Fogbank and was facing the prospect of significant schedule delays. Computer models and simulations had improved since 2001, enabling greater confidence in the analysis of alternate materials. Thus, NNSA began a $23 million initiative to develop an alternate material. LANL officials told us that NNSA plans to certify the use of the alternative material by the end of 2009 for the W76 warhead and if NNSA faced additional Fogbank manufacturing problems during full-scale production, the alternate material could then be used instead of Fogbank.
Israel Shouldn't Sign the NPT
By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
The newest nuclear and missile testing are an unmistakable slap at President Obama's call for broader dialogue. What's also particularly galling to U.S. officials is that Pyongyang signed the Nuclear Treaty and then proceeded to render it virtually meaningless. Meanwhile, treaty signatory Pakistan followed signatory India in unleashing the nuclear genie on the Subcontinent while doing nothing as Sir Ahmad Khan proliferated nuclear weapons technology from Tehran to Pyongyang. Today, the world is left to hold its collective breath as the Taliban nips at the gates of Islamabad--too close to Pakistan's growing nuclear arsenal
Am I missing something here? Is the reference to AQ Khan supposed to be sarcastic?
Selling some or all of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. is the right decision. A major restructuring is what it needs. The Conservative plan would see AECL divided in two: The Candu reactor business would be sold as a commercial enterprise and the Chalk River facility would remain a research facility, possibly under private-sector management.
The review urged that Canada find partners for AECL's commercial side, saying that "AECL does not have the critical mass or financial strength to establish a strong presence into the key markets that will ensure its success."
A political flare-up in Kazakhstan's uranium sector has prompted new investor concerns about an authoritarian country that the world is relying on to provide much of its nuclear fuel in the future.
Yesterday, the government accused Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the former head of state-owned uranium miner Kazatomprom, of illegally selling stakes in uranium deposits to foreign companies.
He was arrested and fired a few days ago by Kazakhstan's Committee of National Security (KNB), a successor to the KGB.
Switzerland has warned a U.S. Senate investigator not to interview a Swiss lawyer involved in a nuclear smuggling case, a spokesman for the Swiss Justice Department said Monday.
Frantz had asked to interview Roman Boegli, the lawyer for Urs Tinner, a Swiss citizen suspected of supplying the clandestine network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan with the technical knowledge and equipment that was used to make gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
And of course we 3rd-rate 3rd-world idiots can't be bothered to question whether their national security interests have undermined our own national security. No wonder the first world countries see us the way they do, and treat us accordingly. We advertise our own moral bankruptcy quite loudly, thus contributing to the low opinions others have of us.
