U.S. Expert Shown North Korean “Plutonium,” Remains Skeptical About Weapon Program

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — North Korean officials this month showed a working nuclear reactor and what they claimed was a piece of plutonium metal to former Los Alamos National Laboratory head Siegfried Hecker, the scientist said today (see GSN, Jan. 16).

The officials presented the evidence as part of a multifaceted effort to convince Hecker, in the country as part of an unofficial U.S. delegation, that they have what they repeatedly called a “deterrent,” Hecker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in an open hearing this morning.

Despite those efforts, the North Korean officials did convince Hecker that Pyongyang has a nuclear weapon or the capability to produce one. “What they did demonstrate,” he said, “is that they have the industrial capability, the equipment and the technical know-how” to produce plutonium.

“It would be a poor assumption to think that the North Koreans would not be able to build at least some sort of rudimentary nuclear device,” Hecker added in a session with reporters after the hearing.

“They clearly wanted us to confirm what they had been telling the world for some time,” he said, referring to North Korea’s claims of reprocessing and reactor operation.

Hecker told the senators that spent fuel appears to have been removed from a storage site at the Yongbyon nuclear facility (see GSN, Jan. 15), that the North Korean officials presented a piece of metal that could have been plutonium, that a five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon was operational and that North Korean officials denied categorically having a program to produce highly enriched uranium.

Touring the Yongbyon nuclear site with the chief engineers of the facility, Hecker was taken to a cooling pond that once stored 8,000 spent fuel rods that North Korea now claims it has reprocessed for weapon-grade plutonium. Hecker said today that “none of the structure that had been built” with U.S. help to monitor the material after the 1994 U.S.-North Korean freeze agreement “was there anymore.” Most of the spent fuel was obviously gone, he said, since many canisters were missing and others were open and empty.

The officials then claimed that they had demonstrated that the fuel had been removed, Hecker said, but the scientist objected that some of the canisters remained closed and could still contain spent fuel. In response, the North Koreans allowed him to choose a canister at random and opened the canister, revealing it to be empty.

“For all intents and purposes, those fuel rods are gone,” Hecker said.

The scientist said he was then taken to a radiochemical laboratory where the North Korean officials sought to demonstrate they were separating weapon-usable plutonium from the spent fuel. He was allowed, he said, to view hot cells where such work is conducted, but the hot cells were not operational and the officials repeated their claim that reprocessing of the spent fuel was completed six months ago. Hecker said he asked to see, but was not shown, gloveboxes in which plutonium would have been extracted.

Hecker said that when he objected to the officials’ assertion that they had now shown him they had reprocessed the spent fuel, “They said, ‘Would you like to see the product?’” Two glass jars were produced, Hecker said, one containing what was claimed to be 150 grams of plutonium oxalate powder and the other containing what was described as a 200-gram piece of plutonium metal alloy, which was funnel-shaped and appeared to have been cast recently.

“I looked at it very closely, and you know, it looked like it could be plutonium,” Hecker said.

Hecker was allowed to hold the jar, which he said was “warm but not very warm” ― plutonium is radioactive and would have such an effect ― and of a weight that “seemed about right.” A Geiger counter was produced to test gloves Hecker had worn to handle the jar, and the counter registered radioactivity as soon as it was turned on, Hecker said.

“Everything was consistent with it being plutonium, and something in there was radioactive, because the probe went off,” Hecker said.

Hecker said there is no conclusive proof the object was plutonium and that if it was plutonium, it did not necessarily come from a recent reprocessing campaign. He appeared skeptical, however, about the possibility that North Korea did something with the spent fuel from the cooling pond other than reprocess it.

“The fuel rods … had been moved. They could be stored someplace else … but quite frankly, that would make no sense” because such a move would be dangerous, Hecker said.

Yongbyon’s five-megawatt reactor was working during the delegation’s visit, which implies that another 8,000 fuel rods are inside, Hecker said, adding that the North Korean officials said they have another 8,000 fresh rods ready to insert into the reactor.

“It is making plutonium as we speak,” he said.

“I said, ‘Of course, you’re making plutonium.’ They said, ‘We’re making heat and electricity,’” said Hecker, adding that the North Korean officials acknowledged plutonium was a byproduct of the process.

Construction appears to have halted on a planned 50-megawatt reactor at the site, Hecker said, describing the construction site as a shambles.

Hecker said the officials appeared to be trying to convince him of their claim that they have a nuclear deterrent but that he resisted, insisting that demonstrating such a claim would entail producing evidence of the capability to make a weapon from nuclear material and to deliver such a weapon.

“They several times sort of went to the final punchline and said … ‘Look, now you have seen our deterrent’ … and they used this word, ‘deterrent,’ in a very ambiguous fashion,” Hecker said.

The scientist added that North Korean officials used the terms “weapons of mass destruction” ― in the context, a clear reference to nuclear weapons, according to Hecker ― and “arsenal.” He said he told them they had “made a pretty good case” that they can produce plutonium metal but had demonstrated no capacity to build a nuclear device.

Hecker said the North Korean officials denied categorically having a highly enriched uranium program despite reports that they admitted to such a program in 2002 meetings with U.S. officials (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002).

According to Hecker, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gue Gwan said, “We do not have a highly enriched uranium program, and furthermore, we never admitted to having one.” Kim said North Korea has no program, no equipment and no expertise in the area, said Hecker.

Hecker said U.S. delegation head John Lewis of Stanford University pressed the North Koreans on the point and that they responded, “We decided to go the plutonium route some time ago, and that’s where our expertise is.”

North Korea has suggested that ambiguities of translation may have led the U.S. diplomats initially to conclude the North Koreans were admitting to a uranium enrichment program. Hecker said Lewis was given a text produced at the time by North Korean scribes and is working with translators to attempt to determine whether such an admission was made.

“Whatever was said before or not said, this time the vice minister left no ambiguity,” said Hecker.

The committee’s top Democrat, Joseph Biden (Del.), expressed particular concern about the highly enriched uranium claim, calling North Korea a proliferation risk and noting that it would be easier for a terrorist group to make a rudimentary nuclear device with uranium than with plutonium, an assessment seconded by Hecker.

Biden criticized the Bush administration for its handling of the North Korean nuclear question. “I’m not at all sure North Korea, under any circumstance, is willing to yield its nuclear capacity,” Biden said, but “so far, I don’t think the administration has made a sufficient effort.” In particular, he said there has been “too little dialogue” between the two countries.

Biden said the “outlines” of a solution in North Korea are clear: Pyongyang must give up any nuclear weapon activity in exchange for U.S. security guarantees, sanctions relief and normalization of diplomatic relations. He expressed concern that Japan and South Korea could move to become nuclear weapon states if the situation continues unchanged.

In a New York Times commentary today, Hecker delegation member Jack Pritchard criticized the quality of U.S. intelligence on North Korea and the Bush administration’s policy aims as “amateurish” and in need of “adult supervision.”

Prithcard, a former U.S. envoy to North Korea, criticized U.S. intelligence analysts, citing in particular North Korea’s removal of spent fuel from the Yongbyon cooling pond.

“American intelligence believed that most if not all the rods remained in storage, giving policy-makers a false sense that time was on their side as they rebuffed North Korean requests for serious dialogue and worked laboriously to devise a multilateral approach to solving the rapidly escalating crisis,” Pritchard said.

That approach is not promising, he said, urging the Bush administration to adopt a more willing stance to talk to North Korea without the complicated preparation required of six-party negotiations. The administration should begin by naming a North Korea policy coordinator to solidify U.S. policy, which has been marred by interagency squabbling, Pritchard said.

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