by Bill Gertz
Preliminary U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that North Korea’s fourth underground nuclear test on Tuesday involved a small explosion that could be a component of a larger-scale thermonuclear device.
U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports of the underground test estimated the low yield of the detected blast to be between 5 kilotons to 7 kilotons—far less than would be detected in a two-stage thermonuclear blast, or hydrogen bomb.
The Pyongyang government announced that the test that took place Wednesday morning local time at a nuclear testing site in northeast North Korea and that it was a successful “first H-bomb test.”
