07/17/14
Rod Lyon
North Korea, Asia-Pacific
The death last week of
General Jon Pyong-ho,
aged 88, chief architect of the North Korean nuclear program, raises
the tantalizing question, “where to from here?.” We’ve become accustomed
to a North Korean nuclear program that limps rather than runs. Two
factors have constrained the program: a shortage of fissile material and
a lack of nuclear testing. Deals cut in the 1990s and at the Six Party
Talks (SPT) have also slowed proceedings; twice now the small 5MWe gas
graphite reactor (the source of all the North’s current stockpile of
plutonium) has been mothballed—and subsequently de-mothballed. But with
that reactor being restarted last October, and a new 25MWe light water
reactor (LWR) coming on-stream, are we about to see a generational shift
to a new, more energetic North Korean nuclear program?
The
short answer is ‘no’. The longer answer is more complicated. Broadly,
fissile material shortages seem likely to hamper the program for some
time yet. Estimates vary as to the size of the current North Korean
plutonium stockpile. The US
Congressional Research Service figure of
between 30 and 50kg (enough for five to eight bombs) seems reasonable,
but that figure could be lower if the third nuclear test involved a
plutonium device rather than a uranium one (something we don’t know). If
the 5MWe reactor is now running smoothly again, Pyongyang can use it to
produce about one-bomb’s-worth (6kg) of plutonium per year. But the
process is slow, beginning with construction of suitable fuel rods for
the reactor, irradiation of the fuel in the reactor, removal and cooling
of the fuel, and reprocessing to extract the plutonium.
Size
matters. Pyongyang’s problem is that the facility is just too small to
allow greater production. Had it completed construction of either its
50-MWe reactor or a 200-MWe reactor, both of which it began building
some years back but subsequently abandoned, the equations would look
much more unsettling. The 50-MWe reactor would have created enough
plutonium for ten bombs per year; the 200-MWe reactor enough for 40
bombs per year.
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http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/atomic-anxieties-how-dangerous-north-
