As for warheads, North Korea has declared publicly that it already possesses nuclear arms. But Dr. Agnew, the former director of Los Alamos, noted that the North Koreans appear to have never conducted a nuclear test — often considered a necessary step to proving a weapon's reliability. "Once they do that, it's serious," he said. "Otherwise, they're just pulling our string."so here's the question: assuming it is able to and wants to, does north korea have a place to perform a nuclear test?
a nuclear test just setting off a nuclear device to see if it works. if you do it in a place in your own country where your own people live, you are essentially nuking yourself. that's why nuclear tests are always performed in out-of-the-way places with low populations that are easily moved out of the way for the test.
the u.s. had the nevada desert for its nuclear tests. the soviet union had the central asian steppes. china had its western deserts. france had its overseas territories in the south pacific. india and pakistan each have deserts in their territory that they used for their tests. i wasn't sure where britain performed its nuclear tests when i started to write this post. but just googled it up, they used the deserts of south australia. israel, the only other nuclear power, is not an acknowledged nuclear power and so they've never tested--though some are still wondering about a mysterious explosion in the indian ocean in 1979.
north korea, as far as i can tell, has mountainous areas, but no where that is really empty like the testing grounds of the u.s., u.s.s.r., china, india and pakistan. nor does north korea have any overseas territories to get around the problem, like the u.k. and france had and used. and, as isolated as israel has been at times, it's nothing like the isolation of north korea today. i don't think north korea is close enough to any other country to pull of a joint nuclear test like israel may have done with south africa in the 1970s.
so if the north koreans have a weapon ready for testing, where would they test?
if the answer is nowhere, then the fact that they haven't tested yet really doesn't tell us much of anything.
