North Korea has conducted test-launches of four short-range missiles, the latest in a series of recent provocations that included the nation's second underground nuclear blast. "North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, but it isn't thought to have designed a nuclear warhead that could be delivered by a missile. Such a first-generation plutonium warhead could have a mass of 1,000 kilograms or more," according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology [2]professor Theodore Postol [3] and physicist David Wright [4]of the Union of Concerned Scientists [5], both Ploughshares grantees, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [6].
(Photo by Jung Yeon-je/Getty Images [7])
Links
[1] https://ploughshares.org/file/909
[2] http://web.mit.edu/stgs/
[3] http://www.ploughshares.org/expert/221
[4] http://www.ploughshares.org/expert/143
[5] http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/
[6] http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/post-launch-examination-of-the-unha-2
[7] http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090702_3816.php