Was the North Korean test Site “HAARPed?”
Reading between the lines of the following report, I’m led to speculate on this possibility.
“Tired Mountain Syndrome”? Seriously?
The timing of the report’s release, right after DKPR “agrees” to stop testing, seems suspicious. Was Kim Jong given a taste of the ability of HAARP’s superiority to Nukes, especially it’s ability to destroy without leaving a trace? And was this a US attack, or China reigning in their loose canon friend by quietly disabling his testing capabilites?
Or was this just a case of too many nuclear explosions weakening the mountain?
Here’s the MSN blurb:
North Korea’s underground nuclear test site has partially collapsed following a massive bomb blast last year, making it unusable, Chinese seismologists have concluded.
The North’s leader Kim Jong Un declared last week that his regime would halt nuclear and long-range missile tests and shut down its nuclear site at Punggye-ri under Mount Mantap in the country’s northeast.
The offer came days before his summit this Friday with the South’s President Moon Jae-in, which is scheduled to be followed by a summit with US President Donald Trump.
North Korea conducted five of its six nuclear tests at the site, with the biggest blast last September 3 triggering a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that was felt across the northern border with China.
The North claimed it tested a hydrogen bomb.
Landslides and earthquakes following the explosion led to speculation that the site was suffering from “tired mountain syndrome”.
Two studies involving Chinese experts have found that a 4.1-magnitude aftershock that took place 8 1/2 minutes after the first quake caused the collapse of rock inside the mountain.
“It is necessary to continue monitoring possible leaks of radioactive materials caused by the collapse incident,” said the University of Science and Technology of China in a summary of one study posted on its website.
The university said the study would be published in Geophysicial Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
An English-language abstract by the study authors in another section of the university’s website concluded: “The occurrence of the collapse should deem the underground infrastructure beneath mountain Mantap not be used for any future nuclear tests.”
The line about the site being unusable does not appear in the Chinese-language summary and it was unclear whether it would be included in the journal.
One of the study’s authors, Lianxing Wen of New York’s Stony Brook University, did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
A second study led by Chinese scientists, including experts from the China Earthquake Administration, also concluded that the September aftershock had caused a collapse.
“The aftershock was neither a secondary explosion nor a triggered tectonic earthquake,” said the second study, published last month, also in Geophysicial Research Letters.
“It occurred due to a process comparable to a ‘mirror image’ of the explosion, that is, a rock collapse, or compaction, for the first time documented in North Korea’s test site,” it said.
The second study, however, did not determine whether the site was unusable or leaking radiation.
“Seismic models, like in this paper, provide only partial understanding of the underground explosions,” it said, adding that further studies are necessary to look at radioactive leaks or possible groundwater contamination.
The two studies reached their conclusions by looking at data from seismic monitoring stations.
China has deployed radiation monitoring stations along its border with North Korea. A state-run newspaper in the northeastern province of Jilin last year published a list of tips on how civilians can protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack.
SEE ALSO:
Chinese geologists say North Korea nuclear test site collapsed, may explain end of program
…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.
The data in the latest Chinese study was collected following the most powerful of the North’s six nuclear device tests on Sept. 3 that 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 that occurred eight-and-a-half minutes after the explosion was “an onsite collapse toward the nuclear test center,” while those that followed were an “earthquake swarm” in similar locations.
Update: Radiation measurements conducted by Spaceweather.com
Horth Korea recently surprised observers by announcing a suspension of its underground nuclear testing program. Geologists in China quickly offered an explanation: Mount Mantap, which sits atop of the test site, had collapsed. The mountain crumbled in Sept. 2017 minutes after the North Korean regime exploded a 100 kiloton prototype weapon. According to the South China Morning Post, the China Earthquake Administration believes the collapse may have created a “chimney” that allows the escape of radioactive materials.
Is there any sign of radioactivity in the air space around North Korea? Our database contains four flights near the Korean Peninsula–two in March 2016 (before the collapse), and two more in Feb. 2018 (after the collapse). These are shown in the map, below, where orange circles of 350 miles and 700 miles radius are centered on nuclear test site. During each flight we sampled X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV at one minute intervals, accumulating more than 600 data points. Low energy X-rays have been used in the past to trace radioactive fallout from atomic tests, so our measurements may have some bearing on the question.
Above: In this map, red dots show where we have collected radiation data in airspace near N. Korea.
And the answer is …. no. Comparing radiation levels pre-collapse vs. post-collapse, we found no significant difference. For instance, radiation dose rates in March 2016 at 31,500 feet were 0.9 uGy/hr (18 times the natural rate at sea level). Radiation dose rates in February 2018 at the same altitude were 1.0 uGy/hr (20 times sea level), a slight increase within the uncertainty of the measurements. If radiation is leaking from the collapsed mountain site, it is not having a detectable effect on aviation over neighboring countries.
29/4/18
Looks like Jim Lee at Climateviewer has cottoned on:
