- This event has passed.
Won-Young Kim
October 21, 2015 @ 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
North Korean Underground Nuclear Tests and Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
Won-Young Kim
Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA
North Korea carried out three known underground nuclear tests (UNT) during 2006-2013. These tests were carried out after the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was proposed to the U.N. in the fall of 1996 as an international treaty. CTBT is not an active treaty yet, since few key countries have not yet rectified it, but a UN agency to handle the treaty is established in Vienna, Austria and is active. North Korean UNTs posed serious test on CTBT because they were relatively small compared with those tested by nuclear weapons states in the past. We will discuss issues related to the detection, location and identification of those North Korean UNTs. There are issues related to estimating the magnitude and the size (yield) of those tests.
Table 1. Three known underground nuclear tests in North Korea during 2006-2013.
|
Date |
Time (UTC) (hh:mm:ss) |
Latitude (°N) |
Longitude (°E) |
Depth (km) |
Magnitude (mb(P)) |
Yield (kt) |
|
2006 Oct. 09 |
01:35:28.0 |
41.2874 |
129.1083 |
<1 |
4.3 |
0.7 |
|
2009 May 25 |
00:54:43.2 |
41.2939 |
129.0817 |
<1 |
4.7 |
2.2 |
|
2013 Feb. 12 |
02:57:51.3 |
41.2908 |
129.0763 |
<1 |
5.1 |
7.4 |
Kim, W.-Y., and P. G. Richards (2007). North Korean nuclear test: Seismic discrimination at low yield, Eos Trans. AGU 88, 158, doi 10.1029/2007EO140002.