[TigerLikesRooster]

North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site: Analysis Reveals Its Potential for Additional Testing with Significantly Higher Yields

By Frank Pabian and David Coblentz
10 March 2017

Abstract

Commercial satellite imagery of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site shows that substantial tunnel excavation is continuing at the “North” Portal (previously the “West” Portal), which provided support for the last four of the five declared underground nuclear tests conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The North Portal tunnels provide direct access under Mt. Mantap, where up to 800 meters of overlying rock is available for test containment. This locale provides the maximum overlying rock possible within the entire test site and is where the most recent and largest detected test occurred on September 9, 2016 (estimated at 15-20 kilotons yield[1]). The continued tunneling under Mt. Mantap via the North Portal has the potential for allowing North Korea to support additional underground nuclear tests of significantly higher explosive yields, perhaps up to 282 kilotons (or just above a quarter of a megaton).[2]

[HomerBohn]

Long, agonizingly long past the time for putting the North Korean citizenry out of their misery and remove that bogus nation from the maps.

Either that or go after that little fat nut case and do to him what he did to his half-brother and his uncle.

[RayChuang88]

Building an implosion-style plutonium-based atomic bomb is one thing. But building a multistage thermonuclear bomb is quite something else, and we don’t know if the North Koreans have mastered the manufacture of lithium deuteride and incorporating the extremely complex technology necessary to build a thermonuclear bomb in the 200 KT range.

[silverleaf]

Be a real shame if something was to go wrong there

[Rome2000]

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/19/world/clinton-approves-a-plan-to-give-aid-to-north-koreans.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18— President Clinton approved a plan today to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea during the next decade in return for a commitment from the country’s hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program....

The provision also means that it will be years before inspectors can resolve the question of how much weapons-grade plutonium the North has already produced and perhaps converted into a primitive nuclear weapon. Some of Mr. Clinton’s defense and intelligence aides said today that they had hoped North Korea would be forced to surrender its nuclear fuel under a much more rapid timetable.

“This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective — an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Clinton said this afternoon

[Mariner]

“an explosion up to 14 times more powerful than the lastest one”

Their last test was estimated at 30k tons.

Who believes the NORKS can now make a 400+k ton fusion bomb?

If they CAN, we, the USA, must destroy that capability and the regime.

No matter the cost, inclusive of total war with China.

[Nuc 1.1]

Thanks Democrats.

[Bringbackthedraft]

Little Kim must have enjoyed playing with fire crackers when he was a child. Oooops, he still is.

[Vaduz]

Bill Clinton success story.

[themidnightskulker]

Not if we nuke it first /s