N. Korea: Satellite Photos of the Explosion Site(before and after the explosion)

GlobalSecurity.org ^ | 04/27/04 (?) | N/A

[TigerLikesRooster]

Click on the small image to view a larger version
New Post-blast Satellite Imagery from DigitalGlobe
Pre-explosion overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003)	Overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004)
Comparative overview of the blast-affected town of Ryongchon
Approximate location of the explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003)	Approximate location of the explosion, post-blast The explosion's crater appears to have been partially filled in (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004)
Comparative overview of the approximate location of the explosion in the town of Ryongchon
The Ryongchon Primary School, pre-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003)	The Ryongchon Primary School, post-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004)
Comparative overview of the damaged Ryongchon Primary School

[GeronL]

OUCH

[GeronL]

I went to a government website and got satellite photo's of my town and neighborhood. Fascinating.

[GeronL]

There are government websites where they allow you to download satellite images of your town and such... right down to neighborhoods. Some of them are from the early 90's though, not real recent.

[eastforker]

We may never know for sure but IMHO it wasn't an accidental ANFO explosion.

[maxamillion]

Thats a kool site,,, thanks

[eastforker]

Drop a rock, boulder or whatever into a body of water, the waves it produces are round, to get the plowing effect you see in other pics of the sight, something has to be moving at a high rate of speed.

[Ken H]

More on the NK explosion.

[Squantos]

FYI........

[JOAT]

Crater Photos

This explosion was massive.

[GeronL]

Hey, its got a better resolution and its in color now... new images of my hometown

[fso301]

Lady on TV said many died in heroic attempts to save pictures of Kim Jong Il and his father from burning buildings.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #31

Kim Jong-il and his deceased father are like pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The only things that they would lack are pyramids and golden death masks after their death.:)

[PhilDragoo]

Kerry Commission blames Bush for NK disaster.

[Boot Hill]

Good post.

Here is the quote from the thread source that TheLion posted in #16:

"According to an UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs Report from 24 April 2004, the explosion resulted from the contact of two train wagons carrying ammonium nitrate with a wagon containing fuel oil. Each wagon contained 40 MT [metric tons] of ammonium nitrate which were enroute to a construction site for the Pakma-cheol san irrigation project. This resulted in a massive explosion creating a large crater and leveling everything in a 500 m radius."   (emphasis and clarification added)

The problem with the above account is the following...

The percentage of fuel oil required to turn to ammonium nitrate into the explosive ANFO, is surprisingly low (in deference to Jim Robinson and Free Republic, please refrain from asking about, or posting, the percentage). But in the UN account quoted above, the percentage of fuel oil looks like it must have been on the order of about 50%. This is a far greater percentage of fuel oil than can be tolerated by an ANFO mix.

The result would be to make the mixture nearly immune from detonation, and if it did detonate, the energy release would be severely limited. I've seen the laboratory test results of what a change of just 1/2% can do to sensitivity and energy release in an ANFO mixture. It is significant. ANFO is hard enough to detonate, without adding this additional impediment to it.

Yet when we look at the pictures that TigerLikesRooster posted here and the others available at the GlobalSecurity.com website she linked this thread to, we see that the detonation was anything but a "limited", low energy event.

The history of ammonium nitrate is the history of massive accidental explosions. Many of those events, like this one, did not have the optimum mixture of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate either, yet they detonated. But in those cases the explosions were preceded by many hours (sometimes days) of intense fire that heated the mixture to such high temperatures that it enabled a detonation to occur. By the news reports I've seen, this was not the case in the Ryongchon event.

TigerLikesRooster mentioned in post #18 that some of the earlier news reports spoke of, among other things, the presence of "dynamite" on the train, but for at least two reasons, that, by itself, is not very significant.

First, some have speculated that if dynamite were present, that might explain the detonation of the ANFO, but while dynamite is sometimes used to detonate ANFO, you would also need blasting caps to detonate the dynamite (blasting caps, alone, will not detonate ANFO). Fire will occasionally detonate some higher NG grades of dynamite, but not all grades. And, to repeat, I've read no reports of fire prior to the detonation.

Now if there had been dynamite on the train and some genius had stored the blasting caps in intimate proximity to the dynamite (now that would have been a real "Darwin Award" decision!) and somehow they managed not to detonate until after the fuel oil and ammonium nitrate had been mixed...well you get the idea.

Second, the term "dynamite" is the lay term for almost any non-military explosive. Since this shipment of ammonium nitrate was intended to be used as an explosive, rather than as a fertilizer ("enroute to a construction site..."), it would not be at all surprising to hear reporters refer to the ammonium nitrate as "dynamite" (stupid, but not surprising).

Since all the eye witnesses to the tragedy are now (presumably) just so much dust wafting across the Sea of Japan at about thirty thousand feet, perhaps we will never know for sure what happened. Maybe this was just a bizarre accident and not an intentional event, but I wouldn't be too quick to write this off as just another tragic ammonium nitrate accident. Not just yet, anyway. (Though I suspect I'm preaching to the choir with that caution.)

--Boot Hill

[Boot Hill]

Incredible...the blast crater at Ryongchon

--Boot Hill

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #34

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. You must be quite knowledgeable about explosives.

Dynamite was the explanation given to aid workers by N. Korean officials when they were shown the site of the explosion a couple of days after the incident.

150 dead after rail blast: N Korea officials "the explosion had been caused by dynamite"

Next, it was a dynamite explosion due to contact with loose electrical wire(electric shock?)

Rail Blast: N.Korea Accepts UN Help

Later, it was back to ANFO explosion triggered by electrical charge from

N. Korea Cites Human Error in Crash

From these reports, It is possible that N. Koreans use dynamite and ammonium nitrate interchangeably, as you speculated. By the way, some Freepers voiced their doubts that electrical charge alone could detonate ANFO or dynamite whichever you call the explosive material. Do you think it is likely?

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #35

Reportedly 9m deep. It looks that way.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #6

Correction:

Later, it was back to ANFO explosion triggered by electrical charge from -->
Later, it was back to ANFO explosion from contact with a loose electrical wire.

[Boot Hill]

•"It is possible that N. Koreans use dynamite and ammonium nitrate interchangeably, as you speculated."

I wasn't suggesting an interchangeability, I was merely addressing the possibility that dynamite might also have been carried on the train. Normally, an ANFO blast uses a base charge of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that is detonated by a booster charge (typically Pentolite 50) which in turn would be detonated by a #8 blasting cap. The blasting cap is typically set off with det cord. I'm just speculating here, but the North Koreans are poor and tend to run everything on a shoestring and would likely substitute the cheaper dynamite for the Pentolite booster.

Nevertheless, for safety reasons and security reasons (real important in a tyranny like NK), the boosters, blasting caps and det cord would likely be shipped separately, probably in an (Army) truck, and not on the train. (One truck, even a pickup truck, could easily carry the necessary detonation explosives for 80 metric tons of ammonium nitrate.)

In other words, I believe there was no dynamite on the train and that the use of the term "dynamite" in regards to the train contents, was a misnomer and was (improperly) used in reference to the ammonium nitrate.

•"...some Freepers voiced their doubts that electrical charge alone could detonate ANFO."

As long as we're not talking about a bolt of lightning, electrical discharge, by itself, will NOT set off an ANFO charge. While there are electrical blasting caps, they contain very sensitive primary explosive charges that can be detonated by an electrical discharge. ANFO is a very insensitive, secondary explosive.

--Boot Hill

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #39

Thanks again for your insight. Also sorry that I left a few typos & mangled phrases in my comments which might have made you confused about what I meant to say. I must be slow getting up from a nap.:)