North Korea NUCLEAR TEST: Radar images reveal collapsed mountain on nuke test site
NORTH Korea’s latest nuclear bomb test created a monstrous magnitude 5.2 earthquake and equally terrifying 4.5 magnitude aftershocks deep underground. Radar imagery and seismic measurements in the area now reveal the nuclear charge crumbled a mountain above the test site.
Just weeks after Pyongyang pledged to denuclearise its secret war chest, an international team of researchers have uncovered the true power of North Korea’s destructive weapons.
The researchers from universities in Singapore, Germany, China and the US studied the aftermath of North Korea’s last recorded nuclear test on September 3, 2017.
The nuclear blast took place under Mount Mantap at the secretive Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the north of the hermit state.
The resulting explosion caused extensive deformation and surface damage over a 9 square kilometre area.
Thermal imagery, radar snapshots and seismic readings from before and after the nuclear test, reveal the mountain’s surface was pushed upwards by 11 feet and crumbled down by 20 inches.
This is the first time the complete three-dimensional surface displacements associated with an underground nuclear test
The findings will be published this week in a study in the journal Science.
Teng Wang of the Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University, said: “This is the first time the complete three-dimensional surface displacements associated with an underground nuclear test were imaged and presented to the public.”
Punggye-ri nuclear test site has been home to all of North Korea’s six nuclear tests in recent years.
The 7,200-foot-high mountain towering above the test site is part of the Hamgyong Mountains.
GETTY
GETTY
According to a 1994 testimony of Ahn Myeong-cheol, a guard at a North Korean political prisoner camp, the tunnels throughout the mountain facility were dug out by prisoner slave labour.
Scientists are now certain the nuclear bomb was detonated more than a quarter mile below the summit of the mountain, vaporising a vast chamber of rock the size of a football stadium.
The force from the blast most likely then pushed the mountain upwards, before it collapsed on the formed cavity within hours or days.
Dr Wang said: “This study demonstrates the capability of spaceborne remote sensing to help characterise large underground nuclear tests, if any, in the future.
Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University
“While surveillance of clandestine nuclear tests relies on a global seismic network, the potential of spaceborne monitoring has been underexploited."
Douglas Dreger from the University of California added: “I am hoping that by jointly analysing the geodetic and seismic data, we will be able to improve discrimination between earthquakes and explosions, and certainly help with estimating the yield of an explosion and improving our estimation of source depth.”
The news comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula at the first inter-Korean summit in more than a decade.
North Korea’s leader has also agreed to a historic meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump.
Kim and Trump will meet in Singapore on June 12 in order to try and appease tension between Pyongyang and Washington.