They’re still not unclenching. How much more nicely can we ask?

Joshua Stanton at OneFreeKorea has a detailed report on North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the news isn’t good for the rest of the world.

Seismic reports from the U.S. Geological Survey tell us that the blast created a magnitude 4.7 earthquake at grid coordinates matching the Mount Mohyang test site, the same place where North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006, and directly adjacent to the enormous gulag of Camp 16.

By contrast, North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test measured 4.2 on the Richter Scale (South Korean measurements were closer to 3.6). Because the Richter scale is logarithmic, each whole number increase in the Richter number equals a ten-fold increase in measured wave amplitude of a tremor, or a release of 31 times as much energy. This means that the latest test would have had a significantly larger yield than the 2006 test, and would have a magnitude that approaches those of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Technologically speaking, and assuming that these numbers hold up, the North Koreans are correct to call this test successful. And if you believe that the North Koreans’ goals are largely technical — that what they “really” want is The Bomb — that’s the end of the story.