Nuclear security

North Korea nuclear test equivalent to '17 times the size' of Hiroshima

The North Korea nuclear test in early September 2017 was so powerful that it resulted in an entire mountain being lifted off the ground and was the equivalent of "17 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima," according to a new study.

The research, published in the scientific journal Geophysical Journal International, also notes that the weapons test caused Mt. Mantap to be displaced by 1.7 feet, in addition to lifting it upward by several feet.

"The nuclear explosion produced large-scale surface deformation causing decorrelation of the InSAR data directly above the test site, Mt. Mantap, while the flanks of the Mountain experienced displacements up to 0.5 m along the Line-of-Sight of the Satellite," the authors wrote in the study's abstract.