NKorea likely to do another nuclear test -experts

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) North Korea can have little faith in its nuclear stockpile given the yield of its first nuclear test and hence is likely to test again, two leading nuclear weapons experts said in an analysis published.

But whether the yield was four kilotons -- as North Korean weapons designers predicted -- or one kiloton, such a device would be a ''terrifying weapon,'' physicists Richard Garwin and Frank von Hippel said in the analysis prepared for the Arms Control Association's ''Arms Control Today Magazine.'' North Korea reportedly told China in advance the October 9 test would yield about four kilotons of explosive force, but top American seismologists have put the yield at under one kiloton, said Garwin, IBM fellow emeritus at the New York-based IBM Research Center, and von Hippel, a professor at Princeton University.

The calculation of Terry Wallace at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was between 0.5 and two kilotons, with a 90 per cent confidence the yield was less than one kiloton. Lynn Sykes of Columbia University estimated the yield at 0.4 kilotons with a 95 per cent probability the yield was under one kiloton, the analysis reported yesterday.

This supports the judgment of the US director of national intelligence, who this week confirmed the test was a nuclear explosion and said it had a yield of under one kiloton.

Garwin and von Hippel said a one kiloton bomb could still have terrifying effect, killing people in a 1 square mile (2.5 sq km) area from fire or nuclear radiation.

''If, as the seismologists have concluded, the yield of the explosion was much less than the design yield, the North Korean government can have little faith in its nuclear weapon stockpile (and) its weapons team will regroup,'' they said.

''This imperfect test may well lead North Korea to test again,'' they added.

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