Chinese scientists urge the authorities to monitor and prevent potential radioactive leakage.
With North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in soon to kick off their historic meeting at the inter-Korean border, Chinese scientists reported that Punggye-ri, the only known nuclear test site of North Korea, has collapsed. This may partly explain why Kim suddenly announced that North Korea “no longer needs” to test its weapons capability last week, and promised to dismantle the test site at Punggye-ri.
On April 23, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) — one of China’s national research universities under the direct leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences — released a study report, confirming that the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, located fewer than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Chinese border, has collapsed. The study also claimed that a series of tremors and landslides that took place recently in the area near the site were triggered by North Korea’s latest nuclear test and the ensuing site collapse.
On September 3,2017, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, causing powerful tremors felt strongly in China. According to USTC’s analysis at that time, the power of the North Korea’s sixth nuclear test was “3 to 7.8 times stronger than that of the Nagasaki atomic bomb — Fat Man — dropped by the United States in 1945.”
The USTC website also released a one-page summary of its research last fall, concluding that (all sic) “The occurrence of the collapse should deem the underground infrastructure beneath mountain Mantap not be used for any future nuclear tests.
