JPR,
It was The New York Times.
The question is whether or not India is telling the truth.
No one outside of India can be in a position to know for sure.
Also, the normal rules of science (i.e., show all your data, so that the experiment can be replicated) obviously don't apply. Since India has not signed the NPT, I suppose that there may be no legal impediment to keep them from publishing the full details of the design in a newspaper, along with all the radiochemical data from the blast, electromagnetic pulse readings, etc. that they used to estimate the explosive yield.
I saw nothing to disagree with in the news article. My analysis of the situation is that the truth inevitably is revealed. If India is lying about what they accomplished, it's bound to cause them harm in the long run. If anyone asked me to advise them, I'd say "don't lie."
A true two-stage device can certainly be tested at the yield that they claim (40 kilotons or so). We (the U.S.) did that in our own program as noted in the news story.
I don't think it was mentioned here, but the U.S. declassified quite a bit of data relating to an experimental concept for making power from fusion. It's called inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
For other countries considering going "all the way" to the Teller Ulam concept, probably the major barrier has been uncertainty about whether or not it would work on the first few attempts. The reason the U.S. Senators were so upset is that if this is true, it means other countries might be tempted to cheat on the non-proliferation regime.
David |
