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North Korea's nuclear test site at risk of imploding, Chinese scientist says
The single mountain under which North Korea most likely conducted its five most recent nuclear bomb tests, including the latest and most powerful on Sunday, could be at risk of collapsing, a Chinese scientist said.
By measuring and analyzing the shock waves caused by the blasts, and picked up by quake stations in China and neighboring countries, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, said they were confident that they were all carried out from under the same mountain at the Punggye-ri test site.
[...] Another test might cause the whole mountain to cave in on itself, leaving only a hole from which radiation could escape and drift across the region, including China, he said. "We call it 'taking the roof off'. If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things."
[...] Based on the fact that North Korea has a limited land area and bearing in mind the sensitivity of its nuclear program, it most likely does not have too many suitable peaks to choose from. How long the mountain would continue to stand would also depend on where the North Koreans placed the bombs, Wang said. "If the bombs were planted at the bottom of vertically drilled tunnels, the explosion would do less damage," he said.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @06:40AM (2 children)
> Because becoming a nuclear power is probably the *only* way for the leader of that country to be able to lift all the sanctions imposed on it by the rest of the world
Didn't Iran choose the other path?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @07:51AM (1 child)
Yes, as did Libya [wikipedia.org], Ukraine [wikipedia.org] and South Africa. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 08 2017, @01:04PM
And I'm sure the strongly worded letter we sent to Russia in response to it's invasion of Ukraine, the minimum required by the "protection clause" of their disarmament treaty, has truly inspired other nations to take the same path...
Honesty, it seems increasingly clear that a nation has two options: be a nuclear power, or get trampled on whenever a nuclear power with a conventional military decides to do so. Other nuclear powers aren't going to risk getting pulled into a war for your sake. And with catastrophic climate change threatening to destabilize global politics over he course of the next century, you've got to know a lot of non-nuclear nations are eyeballing their options.