Another powerful blast at North Korea’s underground nuclear test site could destabilize the area and send radioactive material into the atmosphere, the head of South Korea’s weather agency said on Monday “Should another nuclear takes place, there is that possibility,” Nam Jae-cheol, director of the Korea Meteorological Administration, told lawmakers inquiring about the potential for radioactive fallout. North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006, all of them in tunnels buried deep under
Mount Mantap in Punggye-ri, in North Hamgyong Province. Fears that the repeated nuclear explosions might be destabilizing the mountain have spread since the North’s latest and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. The test produced between 50 and 300 kilotons of explosive energy, according to government and private estimates. In comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II produced 15 kilotons. CONTINUE
