|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
North Korea: Pyongyang Might Have Second Reprocessing Facility A second facility designed to produce weapon-grade plutonium may have been constructed by North Korea, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, July 18). U.S. officials said they detected krypton 85 — a gaseous byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into plutonium — but it did not appear that the gas was coming from Yongbyon, where North Korea was thought to have its entire stock of spent nuclear fuel rods (see GSN, July 14). Evidence of the new site is “very worrisome, but still not conclusive,” a senior White House official said. According to computer analysis, the gas might have been drifting from deeply buried facilities in the North Korean mountains. “This takes a very hard problem and makes it infinitely more complicated,” said an Asian official familiar with U.S. intelligence. “How can you verify that they have stopped a program like this if you don’t know where everything is?” the official added (Sanger/Shanker, New York Times, July 20). South Korean officials said the evidence had not been confirmed. The report will probably not dissuade Washington from “the firm U.S. position of seeking a peaceful and diplomatic solution” to the nuclear crisis, according to South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck. “There is no conclusive information about such facilities,” Lee said (CNN.com, July 21). Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun yeseterday and proposed a plan to hold talks with North Korea in two stages. The first phase would include North Korea, China and the United States. In later talks, the format would be expanded to include Japan and South Korea, Blair said. “We cannot have a situation in which North Korea not merely continues to develop a nuclear-weapons program but proliferates and exports that technology around the world,” he said (Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, July 21). The talks could be held as early as August, a South Korean official said Thursday (Yonhap News Agency, July 17 in FBIS-CHI, July 17).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
