Posted on 11/21/2010 5:43:05 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Scientist: NKorea has built new nuclear facility
By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press 2 hrs 23 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea North Korea has secretly and quickly built a new, highly sophisticated facility to enrich uranium, according to an American nuclear scientist, raising fears that it is ramping up its atomic program despite international pressure.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies.....
Sound like to me Obama is Nero he eat ice cream while America and rest of the Asia feel threat from Chia Chub and Chia Pet
Chia Chub! LoL!!!
NK = perfect contract nuke producers for the axis of evil
Crazy dictator and hard to attack, since there are thousands of Americans and millions of Korean civilians within rocket and artillery range
Thanks gandalftb.
Uranium bomb is much easier to build according to what I heard. It boosts their political and military leverage to have large pop(bigger than Hiroshima size) and show outsiders that they do have goods, putting an end to whispering in some corners that N. Korea is faking nuclear tests.
NK doesn't have the beginning of the technology to actually make a uranium bomb and has shown little effort to do so, as compared to the effort they are making to get the enriching going.
NK has had it with Plutonium, both an an energy produce and as a weapon, witness the last two pathetic tests. They legitimately and badly need nuke fuel for energy and are building a light water power plant that uses uranium for fuel.
The big problem for NK is where to buy the uranium ore, China has very little and won't give it up. That leaves Niger and Namibia, maybe Kazakhstan.
There is a working theory that this centrifuge facility is a "Potempkin". A decoy, that they are not really enriching beyond experimental uses. That the real goal is to work the bugs out of Iran and other's chronic breakdown problems with their P-1 and P-2 centrifuges. Then sell the P-1 and P-2 centrifuges and rent out the engineers to set it up. That theory is driven by the mystery of where NK would ever get the low grade uranium to start with. Also, NK needs cash, bad. What else do they have to offer Syria and Venezuela and Myanmar?
N. Korea has domestic uranium mine(s.) IIRC, somewhere in Pyongsan. I heard there are more than one, although Pyongsan is the biggest.
It is really premature to dismiss those centrifuges as elaborate decoys. Why people always err on the wrong side? Besides, how do we safely assume that N. Korea had not developed technology to produce uranium bomb? Until they set it off?
As for China, since when are they so dead-set against dealings between Iran and N. Korea? At one point, it is widely assumed that China won't stand for N. Korea doing a nuclear test. It was assumed to be red line, and N. Korea had to eventually give up its nukes. Look at how it turned out. China sat still and left N. Korea alone. From time to time, it plays game with grain and fuel supplies to N. Korea, but that is about it. Even if N. Korea is fully nuclear capable, China will still see it as an acceptable price to keep N. Korea under their orbit, short of N. Korea pointing its IRBM toward Beijing.
N. Korea, as it stands, is an economically broken country and is not supposed to have enough money to bankroll their rocket program. However, they insist on having it, and they do so far. There are certain things this N. Korean regime won't give up ever: Its hold on power and nuke/rocket technology. As long as the regime is alive, you can count on the prospect that they will continue to pursue it, no matter the difficulty of procuring necessary materials. N. Korea will have an uranium bomb, unless it collapses in next two years. Whatever technical difficulty they have, they can overcome it given reasonable amount of time, given that uranium design has less kinks to overcome than plutonium design, although uranium bomb is said to be too big to be mounted on a missile. That's OK. Get a working bomb first, whether it is uranium or plutonium design. That will give political leverage not available to them up to now. Then they can work for more challenging ones.
There are people who believe that there are only two options: either they capitulate to N. Korea or dismiss everything N. Korea says. I don't know why it is so, but they seem to be a majority among policy-making circle.
So Condi and Hill made all those stupid initiatives because they "knew" that everything about NK nuke program is a dud?
They have some ore:
Sunchon-Wolbingson mine
Kusong mine, N Pyongan Province
Pyongsan mine, N Hwanghae Province
Sunchon mine, S Pyongan
Unggi mine
Yongchun deposit
Songhak-ri, Hoiryeong
However, NK has offered Russia exclusive rights to its uranium ore in exchange for open support at the six-way talks to ease economic sanctions on NK. The plan is for Russia to import the uranium and enrich it before selling it on as nuclear fuel to China and Vietnam, for great profit.
Rumor has it the centrifuges in NK will only be used to get the impurities out and reduce the volume and send it on to Russia.
The background theme always seems to be NK trying to make a buck.
Alex, I go with the answer:
“North Korea - for oil, hard currency or commodities - is contracting out its territory and workers to externally-directed research, development, testing and production of WMD (and training ground for foreign WMD researchers) for export”
How many nukes do they need to incinerate South Korea? 12? LOL!
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.