He might well use a nuclear device if he gambled that there would be no enemy for the United States to bomb in retaliation.
If the country attempts a third test, analysts have said, it may use a nuclear device fueled by highly enriched uranium.
The government also hopes that terrorists will be less likely to use a nuclear device if they know that it can be traced.
Assuming it does not use a nuclear device, Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound 5,000-poundter" bunkerthat could damage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.
The treaty, which governments will begin signing at the General Assembly session in September, criminalizes the possession or use of radioactive material or a nuclear device "to cause death or serious bodily injury". It also makes it a crime to use a nuclear device to damage property or the environment or to attack a nuclear facility.
I am afraid that assured destruction may not dissuade radical Islamic militants from using a nuclear weapon or device.
In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran.
North Korea has over the past several years tested conventional explosives that could be used to detonate a nuclear device and appears to have received some foreign assistance in developing that technology, intelligence officials say.
Hauer, the New York commissioner, is more worried about much bigger disasters, such as a major earthquake or a terrorist attack using an improvised nuclear device, that would cause more than 100,000 casualties.
