North Korea says it will restart nuclear reactor

Posted on : 2013-04-03 15:36 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Latest move by North Korea apparently intended to reiterate its refusal to give up its nuclear program
 2008
2008

By Park Byong-su, staff reporter

On Apr. 2, North Korea announced that that it would repair and reactivate the 5mW graphite-moderated nuclear reactor that it had shut down in 2007 according to an agreement made during the six-party talks. As this constitutes a declaration that the North will resume its production of bomb-grade plutonium, concern is growing about how this will influence the state of affairs on the Korean peninsula.

“We have decided to alter the use of our current nuclear facilities in a manner suitable our two-track approach,” said a spokesperson for North Korea’s General Bureau of Atomic Energy. “This includes refurbishing and reactivating the 5mW graphite-moderated nuclear reactor that was mothballed and disarmed in Oct. 2007 according to an agreement made during the six-party talks, along with the uranium enrichment factory and all other nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.” The spokesperson was quoted in an Apr. 2 report by the Korea Central News Agency (KNCA).

In 2007, North Korea mothballed the nuclear facility at Yongbyon and discontinued production of bomb-grade plutonium in accordance with the Feb. 13 Agreement and the Oct. 4 Joint Declaration, both of which came from the six-party talks. Reactivation of the Yongbyon facility represents a complete repudiation of the results of the six-party talks.

“Since the Yongbyon nuclear facility has not been in operation for quite some time, it will probably take just over a year before it returns to actual operations,” a [South Korean] government official predicted.

The North’s announcement that it will reactivate the 5mW reactor is being interpreted as a symbolic way of making clear its commitment to never abandoning its nuclear weapons program. It also can be seen as a response to the recently heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula, and in particular to pressure from the US, which has made several shows of force using high-tech weaponry.

Since the end of 2012, North Korea has repeatedly indicated its plans to accelerate nuclear armament. After the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolved to impose sanctions on the North for its long-distance rocket launch in Jan. 2013, the North Korean foreign ministry stated that the North would “quantitatively and qualitatively expand and strengthen its military capacity for self-defense, including nuclear deterrence.”

On Mar. 31, a plenary session of the Central Committee of the (North Korean) Workers’ Party revealed, “a new strategic course that involves simultaneously building the economy and building nuclear power.” North Korea’s latest announcement that it will reactivate the nuclear facility at Yongbyon makes it clear that the North will be going beyond this to actually pursue nuclear armament.

The high level of military tensions between the Koreas in recent days served as the pretext for North Korea’s course of increasing its nuclear arsenal.

North Korea expressed its opposition to the recent Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint US-ROK war games, decrying them as practice for a nuclear attack on the North. It responded by saber rattling and cutting off the direct phone lines with the South. The North reacted with particular intensity to the US sending nuclear assets, including B-52 strategic bombers, B-2 stealth bombers, and F-22 stealth fighters, to the Korean peninsula. This latest measure also seems to indicate that the North is not going to back down in the battle of nerves that underlies the military standoff.

Until North Korea shut down the Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2007, in accordance with the Feb. 13 Agreement and the Oct. 3 Declaration, it had been using the Yangbyon reactor to produce plutonium, which was employed in both its first and second nuclear tests, conducted in 2006 and 2009.

The North is currently only operating its enriched uranium program. This program was revealed to the world when Siegfried Hecker was shown 2000 nuclear centrifuges in Nov. 2010. It is believed that North Korea is able to produce enough uranium for one to two warheads each year at this facility.

This latest measure can also be understood to signify that the North attends to resume the plutonium program that had previously been shut down and combine this with its enriched-uranium program in a bid to diversify its nuclear stockpile.

Nevertheless, it appears unlikely that the Yongbyon nuclear program can be reactivated right away. Not only has the factory been offline for a long time - since 2007 - but the North will also have to rebuild the cooling tower that it blew up. “While we will need to make a detailed technical review of the matter, it appears that it will take a little over a year to bring the reactor back online,” said a senior official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This is why some observers believe that the North Korean announcement is more significant for its political overtones than for concrete consequences that can be expected. They suggest that the move is an attempt to grab attention as the North tries to reorient the global agenda for its nuclear program from denuclearization negotiations like the six-party talks to talks for disarmament and peace.

“It appears that North Korea has declared it will reactivate the Yongbyon nuclear reactor that was shuttered following the six-party talks Oct. 3 Declaration in 2007 in order to show the international community that denuclearization negotiations like the six-party talks are no longer effective,” the official said.

The six-party talks took the form of an asymmetrical trade in which the international community offered North Korea a guarantee of security and economic aid in exchange for the shutting down of its nuclear program. Now the North seems to be saying that, in future negotiations, it expects a symmetrical trade of nukes for nukes, military power for military power.

This was made clear in a statement released by North Korea’s foreign ministry in Jan. 2013. “While there may be talks to guarantee peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region, there will be no talks to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” the statement said.

Yet it remains unclear whether North Korea’s efforts will work, since it is the position of authorities both in the US and South Korea that it is still too early for peace talks with North Korea. The official said, “The basic position of the US is that it cannot enter peace negotiations while North Korea has nuclear weapons.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

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