Regards, Ivan
Posted on 12/27/2002 4:13:58 AM PST by MadIvan
RESTARTING its nuclear reactor could enable North Korea to produce nuclear weapons in as little as 30 days, according to one of Britain’s leading nuclear experts.
John Large, who has worked with the Royal Navy, advised Russia on the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk, and is on the UK Nuclear Co-ordinating Group, said that North Korea’s only motive for restarting the reactor was to produce nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans moved 1,000 fresh fuel rods containing uranium to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor yesterday, saying that they wanted to restart it to produce electricity.
The move comes just a week after they unilaterally disabled monitoring equipment and seals put in place by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency under a 1994 deal with the US in which North Korea promised to stop its nuclear programme in return for supplies of oil.
Pyongyang said that it needed the electricity to compensate for the US suspension of oil shipments after North Korea admitted in October that it was still trying to develop nuclear weapons. The reactor will need a total of 8,000 fresh fuel rods before it can be restarted.
However, Yongbyon produces only 5 megawatts of thermal power, which once converted to electricity and transmitted to cities would be only about 2 megawatts compared with the 1,300 megawatts produced by Sizewell B.
“It’s absolutely nothing, it wouldn’t be of any use, it could just power a few villages,” Dr Large said. There were three possible reasons why they could want to restart the reactor, he said, and each of them would lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
The electricity from the reactor could be used to power a nuclear reprocessing plant also at the Yongbyon complex, enabling the North Koreans to process chemically the 8,000 spent fuel rods that had powered the reactor before it was shut down in 1994.
The North Koreans also dismantled monitoring equipment at the reprocessing plant, which has the facility to separate the spent fuel rods into depleted uranium, and a mixture of plutonium and americium.
That plutonium mixture could be used to produce an atomic bomb within six months to a year. The 8,000 spent fuel rods would produce a minimum of 30kg of plutonium, enough to make seven nuclear weapons.
However, the North Koreans may not have the facilities to handle the americium, which is particularly dangerous, and so may be using the reactor to produce “fresh” uncontaminated plutonium. In that case it would take nine months to a year to produce an atomic bomb.
The third, and most worrying, scenario is that the North Koreans might already have enough plutonium for an atomic bomb, but do not have a nuclear trigger for it.
The UN has never been able to verify how much plutonium the country produced before the reactor was shut down in 1994. Some analysts have speculated that it might have kept enough for two atomic bombs.
In this case North Korea might be restarting the nuclear reactor to produce a “polonium trigger” needed to ignite a nuclear explosion. This would enable it to produce a functioning nuclear weapon within just 30 days.
“All scenarios point to the finishing of the development of nuclear weapons,” Dr Large said. “When you have started producing plutonium, you are reaching the culmination of producing the weapons.”
North Korea’s unstable Stalinist regime has also spent recent years developing a long range missile that would enable it to send bombs as far as Japan. “North Korea has a nuclear weapons development programme on an industrial scale, and the means for delivering them.
“It brings the whole of South-East Asia into political instability,” Dr Large said.
With the collapse of the 1994 deal to stop it producing nuclear weapons, North Korea’s neighbours are left hoping that intense diplomatic efforts can bring the renegade country back in line. “We can never go along with North Korea’s nuclear weapons development,” the outgoing South Korean President, Kim Dae Jung, said yesterday.
“We must closely co- operate with the United States, Japan and other friendly countries to prevent the situation from further deteriorating into a crisis.”
Regards, Ivan
Then they should have a mushroom cloud in 29...
courtesy of Uncle Sam!!
I'd settle for 31...
I think they've reached the point where they'll eat members of their own family, darling. Starvation is that widespread.
Love, Ivan
I am disgusted with these tabloids, and I wish the Crown would start furnishing them with rabies shots. The situation is bad enough without this. Britain has a good nuclear industry and plenty of real experts, and I fail to see what the benefit is to going pub-crawling in order to find a twit like this.
Presupposing that Korea has the infrastructure in place, seperating plutonium, refining, processing, pressing and sintering the material and machining bomb elements and building triggers is something I doubt the US or Britain could turn around in thirty days.
Anything to sell papers. Capitalizing with trash journaism on an issue as serious as this one is borders on being sick.
It's prudent sometimes to listen to the voices of doom, so that doom can be avoided.
Regards, Ivan
I can get behind that, I like your willingness to be cruel to our enemies!!
I was gonna hit 'em at "A-MUSHROOM-CLOUD
My definition of good timing would be to catch them between the "A"- and the "Ha".
I think I show the A-
and then MUSHROOM!!
at the end, but I say
nobody left to say -ha!!
Oh, I surely agree! Whatever we are hearing, it is probably very much worse.
Sorry..I jumped to the article and missed that it was the Times, but that heightens my disappointment in the story. I would have expected better from them.
But, ninety days, maybe, stretching it, maybe. That is bad enough.
Regards, Ivan
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.