North Korea's nuclear tests - what is the connection between a nuclear test and an earthquake?

After what appears to be North Korea's third nuclear test this week, it seems that the world is just waiting for Iran's nuclear tests (and some claim that mysterious earthquakes that occurred in Iran indicate possible nuclear tests carried out there)

After what appears to be North Korea's third nuclear test this week, it seems the world is just waiting for Iran's nuclear tests (and some claim that mysterious earthquakes that occurred in Iran indicate possible nuclear tests carried out there). The well-known excuse: we had an earthquake. Sometimes they say afterwards: it is true that this is a small nuclear test. Or is it a nuclear power plant and only for peaceful purposes. So don't let them tell you stories. Seismic tests and radiation tests later find out what happened underground. Tomorrow in our area.

During the Cold War between the USA and Soviet (Communist) Russia, the Soviet Union did a small exercise to the Truman Mountains.
On August 29, 1949 at 6:00 AM the Soviet Union secretly detonated an atomic bomb in an isolated area of ​​Kazakhstan. Nine days after the Soviet test, an American B-29 atmospheric detection and inspection plane, flying over the North Pacific Ocean, recorded radioactive readings on special filter paper specifically designed to detect such an explosion. He found radioactive material in places where this material was not supposed to be there. A radiation detection plane later verified that the source of the radiation was indeed supposed to be an atomic explosion somewhere in Soviet Asia.
On September 9, 1949, the news was passed on to the highest levels of officials in the Truman administration. No one wanted to believe it, and Truman himself expressed skepticism. To settle the matter, it was agreed that a panel of experts from the Atomic Energy Commission would examine the evidence. The fear of nuclear holocaust after the Russians detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949 led to hysteria in the US.
Everyone agreed among themselves that the evidence was overwhelming: "Ju-1", as the Soviet experiment was called, was indeed an atomic bomb test, and in addition it was a very close copy of the fission bomb, that is, the plutonium bomb developed in the Manhattan Project. Who spied on the Manhattan Project and leaked it to the Russians? It didn't matter anymore. Meanwhile, the next day President Truman was required to make a statement. The stunned Truman hesitated and refused, saying he wasn't sure the Soviets even had a real bomb. He wanted to think about the news for a few days.
Finally, three days later, on September 23, 1949, Truman reluctantly announced that an atomic explosion had occurred in the Soviet Union. He deliberately refused to say it was an atomic bomb. He of course did not mention that the most serious error and mistake of American intelligence during the beginning of the Cold War was: not paying attention to how quickly the Soviet Union would develop an atomic bomb.
The West was captivated by the thought that Russian technology was clumsy and backward - the Russians could not have the engineering, planning and structural means to build large manufacturing plants in such a short time - and this is what caused American intelligence to assume that the American atomic monopoly would survive for at least another decade.
Two days later, on September 25, 1949, the complete denial came from the Soviet news agency "Tass": "In the Soviet Union, as is known, there is a large-scale work construction in the making - the construction of hydro-electric stations, mines, canals, roads, which require work An explosion on a huge scale... As long as this blasting work happens frequently in different parts of the country, it is possible that it could attract attention beyond the borders of the Soviet Union."

Tass went on to claim in a most outlandish way that the explosion in question could not have been the first Soviet atomic bomb, since the Soviet Union had already tested its first atomic bomb almost two years earlier.
History seems to be repeating itself now that North Korea is doing a drill on Barack Obama.
On the morning of May 25, 2009, an event occurred in communist North Korea. North Korea announced that it had tested a second nuclear component (the first nuclear component was tested in 2006), within minutes there was supporting evidence for this in the form of seismic waves collected by seismic stations around the world.
But even before North Korea announced that it had carried out the underground test of its nuclear component, scientists around the world were piecing together the shocking picture of what happened there. Combining seismic and radiation tests, scientists have uncovered North Korea's nuclear secret.
The scientists can find out the size of the nuclear explosion that took place underground and how violently it shook the earth by means of seismographs - exactly the ones that detect earthquakes - and this in combination with the examination of the emission of radioactive radiation and the particles that are emitted from the nuclear explosion. But the scientists are waiting for a leak from the underground test site in North Korea to carry the materials by wind and sea currents to the sensors. Therefore there is a dependence on the weather. Therefore, to understand the significance of the explosion and what North Korea's more or less precise nuclear capability really is, we have to wait a little while.

If so, North Korea's second underground explosion occurred at 9:55 a.m. local time on May 25, 2009. Seismograph detectors off the coast of Japan picked up seismic waves emanating from the area (exactly where North Korea conducted the first test in 2006 - an area that is on the way a rule with completely neutral seismic activity).

Obviously, a natural earthquake can indicate such data, but it's a really rare event there. Then the question arises, where are the injured from the earthquake that allegedly occurred in the area if it is an earthquake? And what about the earthquake reports...

In Japan, a tremor was recorded at a height of 5.3 on the Richter scale and the registration in the USA recorded a magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter scale. and others recorded a magnitude of 4.5. These values ​​are consistent and typical of an explosion that is equivalent to several thousand tons of TNT.

What is the difference between an earthquake and a nuclear explosion? South Korean officials said on May 25, 2009 that they had detected tremors consistent with an underground nuclear explosion. The explosion caused an earthquake in the Kiljoe district and it was measured as having a magnitude of 4.5 on the Richter scale - this already raised the suspicion of an underground nuclear explosion. And then came the message. North Korea's test was actually no secret because Pyongyang announced it shortly after. However, in the absence of a declaration, a ruler can claim that the same test which is actually a nuclear test is an earthquake or explosion of non-nuclear origin.

It's not for nothing that North Korea chose the time for the explosion and made it look like an earthquake. At that time, President Obama wanted the US Senate to ratify the Test Ban Treaty of 1996, the same treaty that prohibits the conduct of any explosive nuclear test and would demonstrate the commitment of the US For the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world.

But in 1998 the Senate rejected the treaty, partly because of fears that countries could cheat: they would claim that small-scale hidden weapons tests were actually earthquakes. The revelation of the North Korean test does raise the hope that the Senate will no longer oppose the treaty.
In 2006, the explosion in North Korea was estimated to yield less than a kiloton and most experts estimated that the experiment failed at that time. The bomb failed to create a chain reaction. The plutonium bomb failed to compress as a result of the explosion malfunctioning, so it failed to cause the chain reaction. However, it seems that the second experiment of 2009 is five times stronger than the one of 2006.

Estimate that the magnitude of the tremor of 4.7 on the Richter scale, the explosion is less than the intensity of the explosion of the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. The uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima caused an explosion with a force of 15 kilotons and the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki caused an explosion with a force of 22 kilotons. As for the 2009 explosion in North Korea, it was estimated that an explosion of approximately 4.5 kilotons may have been received, but it is possible that the explosion was on the order of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - approximately 16 kilotons.

And for the third time, yesterday February 12, 2013, 25 seismic monitoring stations around the world detected a seismic event with characteristics of an explosion in North Korea. A tremor of 5.0 on the Richter scale (between 4.9 and 5.2) was recorded, which is twice as large as North Korea's previous nuclear test from 2009 (remember that explosion was recorded as a tremor of 4.5 on the Richter scale). The location was found to be more or less the same location as the 2006 and 2009 tests. As with the previous tests, the seismic signal was received from the surface of the earth.

Any such explosion by North Korea is another step on the way to obtaining a nuclear warhead on top of a missile. A nuclear explosion in the depths of the Korean soil releases radioactive isotopes of xenon in quantities that are typical and different, for example, from what is released from nuclear power plants. And the excuse that we are building a nuclear power plant for peaceful purposes has long been unacceptable in our region.

To the website of the Committee for the Prevention of Nuclear Tests