North Koreans Hard at Work on New Uranium Reactor

Images published yesterday by ISIS show fresh construction adjacent to North Korea’s old 5-megawatt reactor, the one that eventually became the exclusive focus of two failed agreed frameworks.

For comparison, here’s an image of the same reactor from February 17, 2007, coincidentally just days after the second agreed framework was signed.

The cooling tower in the image was blown up in ceremonial spectacle for the media, and some of the equipment inside the main reactor building (on the right) was dismantled, but then, some have opined that the old reactor was crumbling anyway. Subsequent reports claim that the Yongbyon reprocessing plant was later restored to its pre-AF II condition, and it’s reasonable to infer that the North Koreans might have tried to do the same at the reactor.

It’s interesting that the new construction is happening at this site, rather than at the nearby 50-megawatt reactor that was once reported by the Washington Post to be just two years from completion. Certainly these images do not suggest that that is the case, although we obviously can’t see under the roof. Also interesting is that the ISIS report doesn’t suggest that the North Koreans are building a replacement cooling tower. Instead, it seems to focus on the possibility that this will be an entirely new, light-water reactor. Significantly, light-water reactors are fueled by low-enriched uranium. The existence of a secret, parallel North Korean uranium was a matter of ferocious debate in Washington until, to the embarrassment of some, it wasn’t.

The new reactor, or at least the apparent construction of one, may be little more than cover for an extensive uranium enrichment program, since we presumably won’t be able to verify the degree of enrichment. Uranium must be highly enriched before it can be used in a nuclear (but not a radiological) weapon. A new reactor allows the North Koreans to claim that its uranium enrichment program is for the generation of electricity, which is exactly what it said about its plutonium program back in the early 1990’s.

More satellite images of North Korea’s nuclear facilities here.

In other news this week, if you can call it that, the IAEA has finally gotten around to saying that the site the Israelis bombed in the Syrian desert in 2007 was a nuclear reactor. After the attack, Congress requested a briefing, and the CIA presented this video presenting evidence that the North Koreans had given the Syrians extensive assistance in designing and building the reactor:

The IAEA is now contemplating referring Syria to the Security Council. It will be interesting to see if there are consequences for North Korea too, given that their assistance to Syria is far more dangerous and provocative than their own domestic nuclear tests. It will be equally interesting to see how far China will be willing to go to block effective U.N. action.