nuclear-news

While it’s hard to know for sure what’s really going on in North Korea, one of the most secretive countries in the world, Pyongyang’s underground nuclear test facilities are probably intact, and the regime is likely still capable of testing its rudimentary atomic warhead designs.

Major media outlets reported on April 25, 2018 that large portions of North Korea’s underground nuclear test facility had collapsed and were unusable.

While it’s hard to know for sure what’s really going on in North Korea, one of the most secretive countries in the world, Pyongyang’s underground nuclear test facilities are probably intact, and the regime is likely still capable of testing its rudimentary atomic warhead designs. “The reporting has been mostly hot garbage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, tweeted after reviewing satellite imagery of the 7,200-foot Mount Mantap, where North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site is located. …….

Mount Mantap didn’t collapse. Yes, seismologists registered a 6.3-magnitude earthquake under the mountain on September 3, the result of North Korea’s sixth and most recent underground atomic test. And yes, it’s possible that the quake collapsed the subterranean cavity that the buried bomb blast produced. ……

“Nuclear explosions make cavities,” Lewis explained in a tweet. “One of those cavities collapsed, which seismologists detected. Science is cool. But a cavity collapse does not mean the tunnel complex collapsed, let alone the whole mountain.”

Even if a cavity or part of the adjacent facility was destroyed, there’s no reason North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can’t simply build a new site. “Kim can dig new tunnels quickly to replace the collapsed sites if he chooses to do so,” Bruce Blair, a Princeton University nuclear expert, told me. “He could even test above ground if deemed warranted. There is really nothing technical standing in the way.”

……… Experts agree that North Korea hopes to leverage its newfound nuclear-power status for political or economic gain.  Suspending testing is a good-faith gesture and bargaining ploy that yields what Kim wants out of his testing program politically,” Blair said.