U.S. officials yesterday confirmed reports that North Korea has stopped activity at its nuclear reprocessing facility, but were at a loss to explain why or for how long the suspension would last (see GSN, Sept. 11).

“There’s not much going on” at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear site, said one U.S. official.  Others could only speculate that perhaps Pyongyang was making a conciliatory gesture to encourage continuing diplomatic discussions, had run into technical difficulties, or had finished reprocessing the 8,000 spent fuel rods that were removed from international seal late last year (see GSN, Dec. 30, 2002).

“I’m not sure what to make of it.  There’s a lot we don’t know about North Korea,” said a U.S. official.  “Maybe they’ve stopped (reprocessing).  Maybe they’ve finished.  Maybe they never got very far and decided to wait.  Maybe there were technical problems. … Anyone who tells you they know is lying,” the official added.

Another U.S. official disclosed that there have been no recent reports of detecting krypton gas emissions from North Korea (see GSN, July 14).  The gas is a byproduct of reprocessing, a procedure that separates plutonium — which can be used for nuclear weapons — from a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel (Carol Giacomo, Reuters/Planet Ark, Sept. 12).

Experts have estimated that if Yongbyon’s reprocessing facility were running at full capacity, it could produce one bomb’s worth of plutonium per month.  The 8,000 spent fuel rods are estimated to contain enough plutonium for five to six nuclear weapons.

North Korean officials have declared that they have finished reprocessing all the spent fuel rods, but U.S. officials have expressed skepticism (see GSN, July 15; Associated Press/USA Today, Sept. 12).

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