N. Korea built facility 'to enrich uranium'
Source: Agencies |
November 22, 2010, Monday
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NORTH Korea has secretly and quickly built a new, highly sophisticated facility to enrich uranium, according to an American nuclear scientist, raising fears it is ramping up its atomic program despite international pressure.
The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report released on Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to North Korea's main Yongbyon atomic complex to a facility with a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility. He said the facility had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges and he was told it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor.
Hecker, a Stanford University professor, wrote that his first glimpse of the new centrifuges was "stunning."
"Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us," Hecker wrote.
He described the control room as "astonishingly modern," writing that, unlike other North Korean facilities, it "would fit into any modern American processing facility."
Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in the United States, said the facility appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea's nuclear arsenal. He said he saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium enrichment facilities "could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel."
Uranium enrichment would give North Korea a second way to make atomic bombs, in addition to its known plutonium-based program. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels can be used in bombs.
Hecker, who is regularly given rare glimpses of North Korea's secretive nuclear program, acknowledged it was not clear what North Korea stood to gain by showing him the formerly secret area.
Whatever the reason, the new centrifuges provide a fresh set of worries for the Obama administration, which has shunned negotiations with North Korea following the North's nuclear and missile tests last year and in the wake of an international finding that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. North Korea denied the accusation.
The US special envoy on North Korea began a visit to South Korea, Japan and China yesterday. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Stephen Bosworth arrived in Seoul for a two-day visit to discuss North Korea's nuclear program.
Bosworth's trip to Asia comes as new satellite images show construction under way at North Korea's atomic complex. North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel.
The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report released on Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to North Korea's main Yongbyon atomic complex to a facility with a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility. He said the facility had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges and he was told it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor.
Hecker, a Stanford University professor, wrote that his first glimpse of the new centrifuges was "stunning."
"Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us," Hecker wrote.
He described the control room as "astonishingly modern," writing that, unlike other North Korean facilities, it "would fit into any modern American processing facility."
Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in the United States, said the facility appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea's nuclear arsenal. He said he saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium enrichment facilities "could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel."
Uranium enrichment would give North Korea a second way to make atomic bombs, in addition to its known plutonium-based program. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels can be used in bombs.
Hecker, who is regularly given rare glimpses of North Korea's secretive nuclear program, acknowledged it was not clear what North Korea stood to gain by showing him the formerly secret area.
Whatever the reason, the new centrifuges provide a fresh set of worries for the Obama administration, which has shunned negotiations with North Korea following the North's nuclear and missile tests last year and in the wake of an international finding that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. North Korea denied the accusation.
The US special envoy on North Korea began a visit to South Korea, Japan and China yesterday. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Stephen Bosworth arrived in Seoul for a two-day visit to discuss North Korea's nuclear program.
Bosworth's trip to Asia comes as new satellite images show construction under way at North Korea's atomic complex. North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel.
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