Lee says the National Intelligence Service told him that an estimated explosive yield of six kilotons and a quake with a magnitude of 4.8 were detected Wednesday. South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol Woo says the country's spy agency told him in a private briefing that Pyongyang may not have conducted a hydrogen bomb test at all, given the relatively small size of the seismic wave reported. North Korea's first three nuclear tests, from 2006 to 2013, were A-bombs on roughly the same scale as the ones used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which together killed more than 200,000 people. While seismic data supported the claim of a large explosion, there was no immediate way to verify the type of weapon. North Korea claims Wednesday's test was of a a miniaturized hydrogen nuclear bomb. WHAT TYPE OF BOMBS DOES NORTH KOREA ACTUALLY HAVE? In an undated file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looks through a pair of binoculars during an inspection at a forward post off the east coast of the Korean peninsula. What's the same: Both the A-bomb and H-bomb use radioactive material like uranium and plutonium for the explosive material.

in mind in making this H-bomb announcement,' Tatsujiro Suzuki, professor at the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University, told Associated Press. 'That the bomb can become compact is the characteristic, and so this means North Korea has the U.S.

More compact: Hydrogen bombs can be made small enough to fit on a head of an intercontinental missile. 'In theory, the process is potentially infinite. 'Think what's going on inside the sun,' Takao Takahara, professor of international politics and peace research at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, told Associated Press. Stars also produce energy through fusion. The hydrogen bomb, also called the thermonuclear bomb, uses fusion, or atomic nuclei coming together, to produce explosive energy. Atomic bombs rely on fission, or atom-splitting, just as nuclear power plants do. 'Ivy Mike,' the first thermonuclear (hydrogen) test, was carried out on the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1952, and produced an explosion equivalent to 10.4 million tons of TNT.More explosive: Compared with the atomic bomb (the kind dropped on Japan in the closing days of the Second World War), the hydrogen bomb can be far more powerful – by 1,000 times or more, experts say. Fusion reactions allow for massive explosive yields – thousands of times more powerful than an atomic bomb.Ĭomparison: The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima produced an explosion equivalent to 13,000 tons of TNT. The sun and stars are powered by the fusion process. Also called a thermonuclear bomb or H-bomb. Hydrogen: Involves fusion reaction, in which nuclei collide to form a new nucleus. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 to bring an end to World War Two. Nuclear reactors use fission to produce electricity. Atomic: Involves fission reaction, in which a neutron collides with an atom's nucleus, splitting it into two nuclei and releasing nuclear energy.

Hydrogen bomb vs atomic bomb