What is the potential destruction of the H-bomb that North Korea claims to have tested?

South Korean undergoes television reporting on the nuclear test conducted by North Korea in the train station in Seoul (South Korea)

North Korea said it made a successful test with a miniature hydrogen bomb, known as pump H.

If confirmed, the announcement means that the country now has a weapon that, according to the scientist Matthias Grosse Perdekamp, ​​who teaches about the control of nuclear weapons from the University of Illinois, USA, is the most powerful on the planet.

The government announced the test in the North Korean state television. It came after the US Geological Survey has detected a seismic activity out of the ordinary in northeastern North Korea.

The quake, of magnitude 5.1, was detected at 10:00 am local (23:30 Tuesday GMT) about 50 km from the town of Kilju, near the area of ​​nuclear Punggye-ri tests.

Experts said the tremor would not have been caused by natural causes.

This would be the fourth nuclear test in the country since 2006 - but the first with the hydrogen bomb, more powerful than the atomic bomb.

When the country announced it had the technology, many experts doubted the country's ability to do so.

Confirmation of the test by independent sources may take two or even weeks.
Potential
To date, no blast exceeded the power of "pump-Czar," a hydrogen bomb of 50 megatons (equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT) detonated during a test of the Soviet government in October 1961.

This pump, by the way, was 3000 times more powerful than dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, the first time a nuclear weapon was used in conflict.

The "Little Boy" "(Little Boy" in literal translation), as the bomb that devastated the Japanese city was named, had its destructive power generated by the fission of uranium or plutonium.

The hydrogen bombs, however, work following a process of nuclear fusion, as opposed to the fission bomb: instead of or cracks, many atoms - in this case, the hydrogen deuterium and tritium isotopes - come together to form larger nuclei before explode.

"The power that can be achieved through nuclear fusion basically has no limits," says Perdekamp the BBC World Service BBC in Spanish.

The expert, however, explains that this process is extremely complex - and that therefore there was a certain skepticism about North Korea's ability to develop an H-bomb

The first nuclear explosion takes care of generating the very high temperatures required for the hydrogen isotopes to fuse, which is why the H-bomb is also called thermonuclear.

The final power is determined by the volume of hydrogen, more precisely its two radioactive isotopes, deuterium and tritium.

"The energy released in nuclear fusion has the same origin as the energy that sustains life on earth: the sun," explains Perdekamp.

In the case of the hydrogen bomb, however, the goal is just destruction.
Reactions
After the announcement of North Korea, there was a strong reaction from other countries.

South Korea said the test is a serious challenge to global peace and a violation of resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the alleged test "Japan's security threat".

The United States urged North Korea to respect its commitments and international obligations and said it would respond to provocations.

For John Nilsson-Wright, the Asia program from downtown Chatham House study, the test indicates that Pyongyang continues to invest in its nuclear program without giving importance to the significant political and diplomatic costs of the contract.

After previous tests, the international community responded with political and economic sanctions.