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North Korean Nuclear Weapon Assessments Lack Evidence, KEDO Chief Says
Despite reports that North Korea could have up to eight nuclear weapons, the actual number might be closer to zero, the head of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization said Friday (see GSN, Oct. 1). “When you get into this discussion about the numbers, it quickly sort of becomes people seeking facts,” KEDO Executive Director Charles Kartman told the Associated Press. South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck said in April that North Korea could make eight bombs by reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, AP reported. And in Thursday’s presidential election debate, Democratic candidate John Kerry said the communist nation had “four to seven nuclear weapons,” in criticizing President George W. Bush for not engaging North Korea bilaterally to persuade it to disarm. “They feel comfortable with the numbers because they imply facts. These aren’t facts. They’re worst-casing all sorts of stuff. There may be zero. The number of proven weapons is zero,” Kartman said. The International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of plutonium in samples taken from the Yongbyon reactor in the 1990s, leading to suspicions that North Korea might have reprocessed plutonium at the site, AP reported. “There is a maximum amount of plutonium that could have been reprocessed, and if that is true, then depending on the state of North Korean technology, it would have been sufficient for one, or at most, two (weapons),” Kartman said. “Now when you get to the number two, you are really applying the worst-case scenario. Everything has to run right,” Kartman said. “You’re not going to get too many responsible scientists going along with the number two” since the mid-1990s (Peter James Spielmann, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 1).
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