Yongbyon Reactors
|
|
Yongbyon-5MWe-top-of-core.jpg
North Korea has several nuclear facilities with the potential to produce nuclear fuel for weapons. Most are located at Yongbyon (sometimes called Nyongbyong or Nyongbyon), 100 km north of Pyongyang, in North Pyongan Province. The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center is estimated to have a staff of 2000.
The major installations include all aspects of a Magnox nuclear reactor fuel cycle:
- a fuel fabrication plant,
- a 5 MWe experimental reactor producing power and district heating,
- a short-term spent fuel storage facility,
- a fuel reprocessing facility that extracts plutonium using the PUREX process.
Magnox spent fuel is not designed for long-term storage as both the casing and uranium metal core react with water, it is designed to be reprocessed within a few years of removal from a reactor. As a Magnox reactor does not require difficult to produce enriched uranium fuel or heavy water it is an attractive choice for a wholly indigenous nuclear reactor development.
Yongbyon is also the site of a 50 MWe Magnox reactor, but construction was halted in 1994 about a year from completion in accord with the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework, and by 2004 the structures and pipework had deteriorated badly.
Another 200 MWe Magnox reactor was being constructed at Taechon, 20 km north-west of Yongbyon, until construction was also halted in 1994 in accord with the Agreed Framework.
| Contents |
History
Under the cooperation agreement concluded between the Soviet Union and North Korea in 1965 a Soviet IRT-2M research reactor was assembled for this center. From 1965 through 1973 fuel elements enriched to 10 percent were supplied to the DPRK for this reactor. In 1974 Korean specialists independently modernized this reactor bringing its capacity up to eight megawatts and switching to fuel enriched to 80 percent.
Since nuclear development began in the 1980s, the College of Physics and Technical College of Physics were set up at Yongbyon to train specialists necessary for the operation of nuclear facilities like the atomic reactor at Yongbyon, the nuclear fuel re-processing plant and nuclear fuel manufacturing plant.
Dr. Kyong Wonha, who got his degree at McGill University, is said to be Father of Nuclear Technology in North Korea.
Testings
In March 1986, satellite images of Yongbyon depicted small craters in the sand near a river bank, apparently from experimental high-explosive detonations. At that time a study earlier imagery showed similar craters in the same area since 1983. In June 1988, satellite images reportedly indicated craters at a detonation test site used to develop high explosive implosion techniques for nuclear weapons located near the Kuryong River. By 1991, South Korean sources estimated that North Korea had conducted approximately 70 explosions at a test site located along the banks of the Kuryong.
The controversy to date
In early December 2002, North Korea received a shipment of 20 metric tons of the specialty chemical tributyl phosphate from a Chinese company in Dalian. The chemical shipment coincided with the announcement by Pyongyang that it would restart its nuclear reactors in Yongbyon, and the TBP could be used to extract material for nuclear bombs from North Korea's stockpile of spent nuclear-reactor fuel.
By the end of 2002, North Korea said it was lifting the freeze on facilities frozen under the agreed framework between the United States and North Korea, including a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Furthermore, North Korea asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to remove its cameras from the Yongbyon facility. North Korea defied world opinion on December 21, 2002, by removing IAEA seals and cameras at a nuclear power plant suspected of making weapons-grade plutonium. The agency said North Korea cut most of the seals on equipment and tampered with cameras at the five megawatt reactors. North Korea says the agency did not respond to requests that it remove the equipment. The IAEA said it was trying to keep communications open with Pyongyang. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said it was deplorable North Korea had ignored requests for talks.
Nuclear threat
U.S. Senator Joe Biden said he believed North Korea's restarting of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor poses a greater threat than Iraq. He said within months Pyongyang could have had enough material for five more nuclear weapons. The incoming chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Richard G. Lugar, said the U.S. government must actively engage its allies (especially Japan) in the region.
During a visit to Yongbyon on January 8, 2004, North Korea showed an unofficial American delegation a sample of weapons-grade plutonium alloy. The group spent a day at Yongbyon, and was shown the empty cooling pond where the 8000 Magnox fuel rods from the 5 MWe reactor had been stored within inert gas filled canisters that had begun to leak. During the visit, the reprocessing plant was not operating; reprocessing had been carried out in 2003 with an estimated yield of between 25 and 30 kg of plutonium metal. The 5 MWe Magnox reactor had been operating again since February 2003, and would be creating plutonium within its fuel load at a rate of about 5 kg per year. Early removal and reprocessing of this fuel load was not planned.
See also
External links
- Facilities in the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea Under Agency Safeguards (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaDprk/facilities.shtml) - IAEA, 31 December 2003
- North Korea: No bygones at Yongbyon (http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ja03alvarez) - Robert Alvarez, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
- Visit to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_hr/012104hecker.pdf) - Siegfried S. Hecker
- Disposal of Magnox spent fuel (http://www.defra.gov.uk/rwmac/reports/reprocess/16.htm) - BNFL
- US uncertain over Korean nuclear capability (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3073677.stm) - Jon Wolfsthal, BBC article