On Wednesday, Jan. 6, the North Korean government announced it had conducted a hydrogen bomb test. This followed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s December 2015 proclamation that the country had perfected the hydrogen bomb.
North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program
A hydrogen bomb is more powerful than an atomic bomb because it employs a two-stage nuclear reaction to boost its explosive power. The first stage is a nuclear fission reaction (such as in a traditional atomic bomb), which then triggers a secondary nuclear hydrogen fusion reaction that gives the hydrogen bomb its greater explosive yield.
If this detonation was a hydrogen bomb test—which the U.S. government is disputing—then it was likely less successful than the North Korean leadership may have hoped. A hydrogen bomb would be expected to register an explosive yield 100 to 1000 times larger than a fission bomb. However, the blast does not appear to have registered a sufficient explosive yield to constitute a successful hydrogen bomb test.
