Research by Chinese geologists suggests that the mountain above North Korea’s main nuclear test site has likely collapsed, rendering it unsafe for further testing…
Research by Chinese geologists suggests that the mountain above North Korea’s main nuclear test site has likely collapsed, rendering it unsafe for further testing and requiring that it be monitored for any leaking radiation.
The findings by the scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China may shed new light on North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s announcement that his country was ceasing its testing program ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U. S. President Donald Trump.
The results also support some of the findings of an earlier study by another group of Chinese researchers that was published last month by the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Nuclear explosions release enormous amounts of heat and energy, and the North’s largest test in September was believed early on to have rendered the site in northeastern North Korea unstable.
Chinese authorities have said they’ve detected no radiation risk from samples collected along the border. Calls to those departments were not immediately answered on Thursday.
The data in the latest Chinese study was collected following the most powerful of North Korea’s six nuclear device tests on Sept. 3, which is believed to have triggered four earthquakes over the following weeks. The yield of the bomb was estimated at more than 100 kilotons of TNT, at least 10 times stronger than anything the North had tested previously. (The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons.)
The University of Science and Technology of China paper, authored by Tian Dongdong, Yao Jiawen and Wen Lianxing, said the first of those earthquakes, which occurred 8 ½ minutes after the explosion, was « an onsite collapse toward the nuclear test center, » while those that followed were an « earthquake swarm » in similar locations.
