(Controlled) fusion has very little immediate military applications, and even if NK were able to meet all their energy needs tomorrow with fusion, it still wouldn’t fix their disastrous economy and collapsed agricultural industry. So even if it is true I doubt that anything would materially change with NK.

MTd2 wrote: They could just easily heat their crops on green houses.

I think first you need to have:
a)Crops
b)Greenhouses
Failing that you could have:
a)Sources to buy crops from and money
b)Materials to build greenhouses
Failing that you could have
a) Artillery pointed at closest neighbors
Yes, that could totally work, but why do you need crops and greenhouses for?

I reckon they just fused a few atoms, like any basement physicist can do with a fusor, dpf or whatever. Maybe they even built a small tokamak. That picture is a torus? Yes? No?

more 1984-land propaganda. they also claim to have a satellite in orbit, broadcasting on FM. but North Koreans don’t own radios, so they cant debunk their own claims.

it is possible that NK could make a working Farnsworth fusor, and begin a fusion research programme. i would love it if they could really reach break-even, but it hasn’t happened.

MTd2 wrote: The impression I have about FFP it is that it was not achieved 30+ years ago it is that no one thought it would suppress bremsstrahlung radiation with the magnetic field in the pinch. But after Lerner posted the idea a few years ago on the net, it would be very trivial to achieve that. Much easier than even design an atomic bomb or a ICBM, even if it is a fluke lauch. So, I dont think it is hard to imagine NK with a FFP.

Yes but so far the DPRK hasn’t done too well in the ICBM or nuke dept. Their nukes tend to fizzle and their ICBMs tend to splash.

And if they had a working fusion reactor, what would they do with it? Their economy cratered when the Soviet Union fell and they lost their subsidies.

MTd2 wrote: With a huge quantity of energy available, they could become totally self sufficient within a few years. They could start by providing energy to mining operations. So, the first sign of that would be that instead of NK being a black hole seeing from space at night, there would be a few bright stars around the mountain ranges.

I doubt the regime could tolerate the internal political and economic side effects of that. There’s more involved, of course; I saw a study recently which indicated that compared to SK residents, NKers were stunted physically, mentally, and emotionally, from nutritional and other lacks.