Nukes need no test

last updated 8 January 2015

Pyongyang

North Korea can be confident that its nuclear bombs will work even if it doesn’t conduct a test explosion, the CIA told Congress. The totalitarian country’s computer modeling and its tests using conventional explosives are sophisticated enough to render a nuclear test—with all the international condemnation it would bring—unnecessary. The CIA said North Korea already had at least one or two simple fission bombs, similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima. It is unknown how much weapons-grade fuel North Korea has produced since it kicked out international inspectors at the end of last year. “We may never know for sure how many weapons they manufactured and then hid away in some tunnel,” an unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times.