After six tests, the mountain hosting North Korea’s nuclear blasts may be exhausted

By Anna Fifield October 20 at 3:56 AM

TOKYO — Have North Korea’s nuclear tests become so big that they’ve altered the geological structure of the land? Some analysts now see signs that Mount Mantap, the 7,200-foot-high peak under which North Korea detonates its nuclear bombs, is suffering from “tired mountain syndrome.”

The mountain visibly shifted during the last nuclear test, an enormous detonation that was recorded as a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in North Korea’s northeast. Since then, the area, which is not known for natural seismic activity, has had three more quakes.

“What we are seeing from North Korea looks like some kind of stress in the ground,” said Paul G. Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “In that part of the world, there were stresses in the ground but the explosions have shaken them up.”

Chinese scientists have already warned that further nuclear tests could cause the mountain to collapse and release the radiation from the blast.

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