N. Korea's 2nd nuclear test site pinpointed in new study

Yonhap News ^ | 1/10/2009 | Sam Kim

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Two U.S.-based scientists said Sunday they've located the site of North Korea's second nuclear test last year more precisely than ever before, pinpointing it just 2 kilometers off the place where the first test was conducted in 2006.

Lianxing Wen, a geophysics professor at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and his graduate student, Hui Long, located the epicenter of the second nuclear test on May 5 last year with a margin of error of only 140 meters, compared with 3.8 kilometers achieved by the U.S. Geological Survey.

"We locate the 2009 test at 723 meters north and 2,235 meters west of the 2006 test," the scientists said in the study, which was published in the January-February edition of Seismological Research Letters of the Seismological Society of America.

Identifying the coordinates of the 2009 test site as 41°17′38.14″N latitude and 129°4′54.21″E longitude, the scientists said their findings should help Asian monitors to pinpoint the location of another nuclear test should North Korea ever decide to go ahead with one.

"The location of any future nuclear test around this particular test site will be pinpointed in real time, with a similar precision," Wen said in a separate email interview. "With its exact location known, the wave propagation effects due to location geology can be accurately accounted for, leading to a more accurate determination of yield."

North Korea conducted its first underground nuclear test in Oct. 9, 2006 in Punggye-ri in its northeastern county of Kilju, according to U.S. and South Korean officials.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Ping

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

http://geophysics.geo.sunysb.edu/wen/Reprints/Wen_Long_SRL_Preprint.pdf

Here is the copy of the report.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[martin_fierro]

Lianxing Wen, a geophysics professor at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and his graduate student, Hui Long

That guy's got all kinds of hidden talents.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bump.

[TXnMA]

Google Maps put his coordinates over 5 klicks east of where I positioned the shot. Check this GM image.

Assuming GM puts their "balloon" marker precisely on the coordinates, (which I seriously doubt) his site is in a snow-burdened mountainous area with no visible access or construction.

My ID'd site is just to the left (west) of the "green/snow" image-pass line, and is at the eastern end of a long access road, and has a clearing, structures, and visible power lines. It also has a smaller, connected clearing about 300M SW of the structures:

If you use the clearing marked, "Possible Test Site" on my (25 MAY 2009) image as a "pivot" and rotate the GM "Balloon" marked "indicated by seismology" 90 degrees tothe east, you will be about halfway (eastward) to the "new" location".

Granted, there may be some tunneling involved, but I am confident that the test was "run" from the site I ID'd in May...