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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — If North Korea follows through on its threat to conduct an atmospheric nuclear test, it would be a far more dangerous step than anything Kim Jong-un, its leader, has attempted — and poses a host of hard decisions for the Trump administration because attempting to stop the test could be as dangerous as letting it go ahead. All six of the North’s nuclear tests have been underground, containing the radioactive fallout. But an atmospheric test — perhaps with a warhead shot over the Pacific on a North Korean missile, or set off from a ship or barge — would put the populations below at the mercy of the North’s accuracy and at the winds that sweep up the radioactive cloud. That is why the United States and the Soviet Union banned such tests in their first nuclear test-ban treaty, more than a half-century ago. It is exactly that fear of an environmental or humanitarian calamity that Mr. Kim appears eager to foster as he looks for ways to strike back at the United States, Japan and others seeking to choke off his money and trade. But experts who have been through the uncertainties of nuclear testing say there are risks all around, for Mr. Kim as well as his foes. “It is not clear North Korea has that capability yet,’’ said Siegfried S. Hecker, the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the nuclear weapons expert the North Koreans let in to see their uranium enrichment plants years ago, when they wanted to make clear to the Obama administration ... Link to the full article to read more