North Korea to blow up nuclear reactor tower
Updated
In a sign that it's serious about dismantling its nuclear programme, North Korea plans to blow up the cooling tower of its main muclear reactor. The moves comes after Pyongyang handed over a long-awaited account of its nuclear programme to China.
Presenter: Rob Sharp
Speaker: RMIT University Professor Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute
HAYES: Well, first of all it's an unclassified, but not yet public document, so I haven't read the document the Chinese have and of course the governments of the six parties to the talks have it. But reportedly it declares that they have roughly produced about 36 kilos of plutonium which is what you would make nuclear weapons from in North Korea, which is substantially less than American experts calculated in the worst case, but from my knowledge of North Korea it's consistent with their rather poor technical operating capacity of complicated equipment. It's not an easy reactor type to operate. So it's enough for five to seven nuclear weapons, one of which they have exploded. So you could roughly say that we now know that they have about six nuclear weapons as a maximum, if they have weaponised all that plutonium.
SHARP: Well, how can North Korea's account be fully verified and what sort of processes need to be undertaken?
HAYES: Well, I think that what will have to happen is what are called onsite inspections, actually gathering more documentary evidence of how the different facilities were operated. Ultimately the best ways to drill into the reactor core which is made of graphite and if you do that from different angles, you can get the trigonometry of the neutron fluxes of operating the reactor over time which will give you about a one per cent accuracy of how much plutonium was produced in the reactor's lifetime, that's what has to happen. That's not going to happen in the short term, but it is very important therefore not to bomb the reactor.
SHARP: President George W. Bush has indicated he's notifying Congress of his intent to take North Korea off the US list of state terrorism sponsors in 45 days or so. Peter, if the declaration is complete, how significant is that move?
HAYES: Well first of all, the declaration is not complete. The state department fact sheet states that the declaration addresses their uranium enrichment program and their proliferation activity, particularly in relation to a reactor that was bombed by Israel last year in Syria. And although that is a secondary issue, it's very clear that it remains on the mind of the United States and the other parties. It has been in fact dealt with in an interim fashion by appending a confidential statement by the United States which the North Koreans have agreed to accept, that's how that issue has been bumped into the future. But we don't know precisely what they are doing on these other scores. So in addition to dealing with these outstanding issues, the next step will be to lift the listing of North Korea on a terror listing of states that our terrorist states, and also to lift some of the trade sanctions imposed by United States, but that is also reversible and that will not actually be completed until such time as the verification principles and the actual implementation of the verification of the latest declaration is complete. So my guess is that's going to take much longer than 45 days. And of course the United Nations Security Council's sanctions on North Korea imposed after its missile and nuclear test remain in place. So this is purely symbolic, it doesn't actually make much difference to how multinational companies will think about investing in North Korea.
SHARP: Just very briefly, Professor Hayes. The North has said that it will destroy a nuclear cooling tower at its Yongbyon reactor on Friday, in an apparent show of commitment to the deal. The media will be there, a senior US diplomat will be there. Is this a serious commitment or is it all for the cameras, do you think?
HAYES: Well, it technically completes Phase One, which is to disable their production facilities for plutonium. Phase One was called Disablement Phase Two which we are about to go into is a much more demanding phase related to dismantling all the facilities and ultimately the nuclear weapons. It is politically significant and I should say the fact that this declaration was about six months late was also the result of foot dragging and delivery of American and other four party commitments to provide oil to North Korea, which only was completed very recently. But what is really going on here is that the whole process really amounts to confirming that North Koreans have nuclear weapons at the moment, which is really in their interest and they are saying they are willing to accept a cap of roughly six weapons worth as sufficient to compel the United States and its partners to accept its terms, and to deter American attacks. So in a sense we're conducting a virtual nuclear test for the North Koreans that saves them another weapons worth of plutonium. We're moving parts around on the chess board at the moment, not taking them off.
