North Korea made the world tremble Monday with a massive nuclear test that may have matched the Hiroshima A-bomb, but experts say the blast's size could paradoxically offer a glimmer of comfort.

"They might be making a political bomb," said Geoffrey Forden, an arms expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explaining that a big, old-fashioned bang may present less of a strategic threat for the rest of the world.

Russia, which shares an 18-kilometer (11-mile) border with the Stalinist state, said the power of North Korea's latest nuclear explosion was the equivalent of between 10 and 20 kilotons of TNT.

That is in keeping with "Little Boy" — the 4,000-kilogram (8,900-pound) bomb dropped from the B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" — which leveled Hiroshima at the end of World War II, and the 4.7-magnitude seismic activity registered by the explosion.

"If they had gone with the 'fail safe' WWII design, it would probably mean it was too heavy to mount on a missile," Forden told AFP.

It could have been a public relations necessity. North Korea's first test, in October 2006, resulted in an explosion of around half a kiloton, much less than anticipated.

"The DPRK (North Korea) apparently told China before its 2006 test that they were aiming for a yield of about four kilotons and they definitely had a yield around half a kiloton, so there was a problem," said Forden.

"If they had gone with a test of 20 kilotons, as the Russians are saying, it means that they were changing designs to ensure they got a big bang and avoided the publicity problems they went through during 2006 of having their first test a failure."

So Pyongyang may have got more bang for the buck, but scientists and military intelligence are still scrambling to determine what actually happened Monday on an isolated stretch of the Korean Peninsula.

"It will take us a couple of days to verify this test," the US top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, said Monday.

"The four-kiloton bomb, however, might very well fit on a DPRK missile. If they have stayed with this design, it probably indicates that weaponizing it is even more important than ensuring a successful test."

The results of that probe could tell the world a great deal about North Korea's intentions.

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