Author Archives: J-Pollack

North Korea’s Reprocessing Option

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“Mark Landler in the NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/asia/15korea.html asked Sig Hecker for his view:

Siegfried S. Hecker, a professor at Stanford University who has extensively toured the plant, said it would take six months to rebuild the cooling tower that North Korea blew up in June 2008 as part of an earlier agreement.

But Dr. Hecker said the North Koreans could begin reprocessing plutonium from an existing cache in a couple of weeks. That would allow them to make at least one additional bomb, he said, which might embolden them to conduct another test and refine their bomb-making expertise.

“With Yongbyon disabled, it meant no more bombs and no better bombs,” Dr. Hecker said.

The North had earlier agreed in principle to give up its nuclear material and any weapons, but talks on how to reach that goal stalled. During the Bush administration, North Korea is believed to have produced enough bomb-grade plutonium for six or more nuclear weapons.

Dr. Hecker said that throwing out inspectors also raised the risk that North Korea could sell nuclear material to other countries.

The possibility of a second nuclear test -was mooted at least as early as last month- has been mooted “recently”:http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2009/03/26/62/0401000000AEN20090326007400315F.HTML.

Would it get the North Koreans anything? As mentioned above, it could help them to validate a bomb design. But would it soften up the U.S. or the neighbors? I doubt it.

Iran Talks: Definition of Terms

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I’ve “put this off”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1906/promissory-note for awhile, but it’s time: time to weigh the pros and cons of negotiation with Iran without preconditions. But before tackling this hefty matter, a clarification.

David Sanger’s “story in -Monday’s- Tuesday’s NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/middleeast/14diplo.html floats a trial balloon, indicating that the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany – the hard core of the 5+1 group – are poised to shift ground on Iran strategy:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.

This overview subtly mischaracterizes the record. Suspension as a precondition for talks was a European policy before it was American. The Iran-E3 talks of 2003-2005 took place under conditions of “voluntary suspension.” What Iran’s “National”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1976/the-festival-of-unenriched-fuel “Nuclear”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1981/inside-irans-fmp “Technology”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1982/more-about-irans-fmp “Day”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1984/the-black-bellows commemorates, in fact, is the reversal of suspension.

The distinctly American position on Iran was something else: a refusal to engage in direct negotiations on the nuclear issues. But this difference between the U.S. and the E-3 was dissolved in May 2006 when Secretary of State Rice announced that “the U.S. would participate”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5034920.stm in direct talks with Iran, once suspension is resumed. In other words, on the same terms as the Europeans. (In practice, this has meant “more than preliminary talks.” But that’s another story.)

What’s more, the UN Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend enrichment or reprocessing-related activities in five separate Resolutions. That’s apart from the question of negotiations, but the point is, we’re not talking about America Alone.

The Obama administration, it seems, has now led the E-3 away from this unified position, in favor of talks without preconditions. But this process — which started during the “Presidential campaign”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703099.html — hasn’t happened overnight or without difficulty, as indicated by the “occasional”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101658.html “report”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064158.html.

OK, enough throat-clearing. Substance to follow.

Update: I should have mentioned that the “State Department”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/04/121682.htm and the “White House”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-4-14-09/ say that the position on Iran hasn’t changed… yet.

A Moment of Gloom

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This evening’s _Nelson Report_ has much discussion of today’s North Korea developments.

N.KOREA…you remember the song, “Oh, what a difference a day makes, 24 little hours…”

The N. Korean government today took steps which, taken literally, may be irrevocable…announcing, twice, it would “never” return to the 6 Party Talks.

That was followed with the official expulsion of IAEA inspectors from the Yongbyon nuclear complex.

“And furthermore” steps included repeating recent threats to fully re-start the Yongbyon fissile material production process…something the Bush folks hoped had been “disabled”, perhaps to the point of “dismantlement”.

Bear in mind the DPRK last month kicked out all international NGO’s, a move it presumably could more or less afford, most of the food needed for getting to the spring harvest having already been delivered.

And in a step not publicized, the N. Korean UN reps privately told US groups planing private trips North that everything’s on hold until further notice.

Add it all up and you can see a self-imposed isolation by the NK leadership.

And whatever ALL of this may reflect in terms of the “succession question”…one can speculate that Kim and his advisors assume the US reaction will be what it has been since the Bush Administration concluded IT’S “freeze option” was a dismal failure.

That is, the US will try to come up with sufficient “inducements”…a word which the Obama folks would like to ban from the lexicon…to bring Pyongyang back to the table.

As you will read, below, serious, pro-engagement adult supervisors like Amb. Jack Pritchard warn that now is NOT the time to jump at that option.

Which brings us back to “never”…

Obviously, NO ONE today has any kind of solid intel, much less solid analysis on the real situation in Pyongyang, and what the leadership there now intends.

But we have to tell you that just about ALL our Korea policy e-mail salon has concluded, collectively and separately, that today’s “never” may have fundamentally altered the equation, and that from today, it’s a new game, with rules we now must work with China, Japan and South Korea to figure out.

That’s just a sample. If you want more, you gotta subscribe.

NK: Can This Bad Marriage Be Saved?

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Here’s the “IAEA statement”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2008/prn200813.html on North Korea’s latest move:

Press Release 2008/13
IAEA Removes Seals from Plant in Yongbyon

24 September 2008 | Following is a statement to the media by IAEA Spokesperson Melissa Fleming on the situation in the DPRK:

“As the Director General reported to the Board on Monday, the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea, the DPRK, asked the IAEA to remove seals and surveillance from the reprocessing plant in Yongbyon.

This work was completed today. There are no more IAEA seals and surveillance equipment in place at the reprocessing facility.

The DPRK has also informed the IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week´s time.

They further stated that from here on the IAEA inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant.”

OK, OK, here’s the “new IAEA statement”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2009/prn200903.html:

Press Release 2009/03
IAEA Inspectors Asked to Leave the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

2009-04-14 | Following is a statement to the media by IAEA Spokesperson Marc Vidricaire on the situation in the DPRK:

“The Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has today informed IAEA inspectors in the Yongbyon facility that it is immediately ceasing all cooperation with the IAEA. It has requested the removal of all containment and surveillance equipment, following which, IAEA inspectors will no longer be provided access to the facility. The inspectors have also been asked to leave the DPRK at the earliest possible time.

The DPRK also informed the IAEA that it has decided to reactivate all facilities and go ahead with the reprocessing of spent fuel.”

The consensus is already taking shape: North Korea has walked away from the 6PT and ain’t coming back. Maybe I’m overcorrecting, but I remember thinking the same thing last year, too.

Possibly there’s still hope, if not for the resumption of the 6PT, then for renewal of dialogue in some other form that keeps Yongbyon on ice. Both sides seem to have an interest in moving to a “bilateral format”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1947/batman-begins.

Still, things do look worse this time around, don’t they? It may be that KJI, post-stroke, has become preoccupied with regime solidarity, and is not interested in handing off a delicate diplomatic process to a neophyte successor.

If so, KJI is courting a very tough response from a U.S. that feels threatened by surplus plutonium, and the possibility that it might someday go further afield than North Korea.

Continuing Resolution, Ctd.

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Last week, during a well-attended discussion of US-Russian nuclear arms reduction talks, Rose Gottemoeller “offered this thought”:http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1305&prog=zgp&proj=zted on the Dec. 5 expiration date of the START treaty:

bq. You know, if things aren’t going well, you can’t rush to the finish just to get something done. And I want to make it clear that from the perspective of the United States, we will do what we have to do to get this negotiation done, but as Secretary Clinton said when she went before the Congress for her own hearing, she said, if necessary, we will look for ways to find more time for the negotiators. So just bear that in mind as well.

“Makes sense to me”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1967/us-rf-cr.

Russia’s EW Is Worse Than You Thought

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Last week’s obsessive recapping of the Unha-2 launch provided an occasion to “ask why Russian officials have such odd perceptions”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1971/russia-eyes-north-korea of North Korean missile and nuclear activity, and what that would imply for the actual use of GMD by the United States. Hint: not so good.

Just a few days later, the situation looks, if anything, even worse than at first glance. While there’s every reason to believe that the Russians can see missiles inbound from the United States, there’s not much indication that they can see missiles launched from North Korea.

That means that a multiple GMD launch in the direction of Russia is likely to be the first thing that the Strategic Rocket Forces commander learns about, not the North Korean launch(es) that would have prompted it.

Because I’d like to come to the point while I still have your attention, I’m putting the source material in the comments. Go look there, if you’re not too squeamish.

Memorandum

To:     Combatant commanders, present and future
From: Posterity

One doesn’t want to judge hastily. So: _if_ these accounts are basically accurate — I stress _if_ — and until such a time as this mess can be cleared up, the actual use of GMD against a North Korean missile launch in the direction of North America would appear to be an act of madness.

Cross-posted to “ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2257/russia-north-korea-worse-than-you-thought. See the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2257/russia-north-korea-worse-than-you-thought#comment.

Unha-2 Revisited

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A “hot item”:http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0904/10northkorea/ by Craig Covault is all the talk right now:

North Korean rocket flew further than earlier thought
BY CRAIG COVAULT
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: April 10, 2009

New details emerging from the analysis of data from North Korea’s April 5 Taepo-Dong-2 test indicate the vehicle flew successfully several hundred miles further than previously believed and used more advanced steering than has been demonstrated by the North Korean’s before.

The rocket impacted as far as 2,390 miles from the launch site as opposed to about 1,900 miles as earlier announced by the U. S. and Japan.

Smoke puffs from the side of the vehicle at the moment of liftoff and after, indicate the rocket could have been equipped with attitude control thrusters.

It also temporarily flew in space before failing and dropping back into the atmosphere at relatively slow speed that enabled debris to survive till impact rather than burning up.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the second time that the distance flown has been revised upward.

Do “check it out”:http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0904/10northkorea/ — there are a number of new details here.

In Praise of the Japanese Press

I was curious to see if anyone had this story earlier; apparently not. But oh, what I did find! Possibly we here in Hmerica don’t pay enough attention to the Japanese press. Even a week ago, Tokyo reporters had all kinds of details that have yet to make the _New Wall York Washington Street Times Journal Post_, so far as I’ve noticed.

No excuses, folks: it’s on the web, and it’s in English.

This “April 4 article”:http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200904040057.html by Kuniichi Tanida in _Asahi Shimbun_ clues us in to the vast network of sensors around Japan, including this now-infamous one, which turns out to have been brand-spanking-new:

bq. The Defense Ministry also completed installation of FPS-5 radar on Shimokoshikijima island in Kagoshima Prefecture in March. The radar began operating Wednesday and will transmit information about the launch to the Aegis destroyers and the units operating the PAC-3 missiles.

A number of Japanese wire reports on “late”:http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97BMBI80&show_article=1 “April 4”:http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japanese-govt-erroneously-reports-launch-of-n-korean-rocket and newspaper reports on “April 5”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090405TDY01306.htm reveal that Japan suffered not one but _two_ false missile-launch warnings. One also reveals that the FPS-5 has earned the nickname “Gamera”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090405TDY01306.htm.

“Told ya”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1915/japan-shakes-its-fist-at-north-koreas-rocket. Well, sort of.

!/images/97.jpg! !/images/98.jpg!

(“Ginormous golf ball”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1986/all-teed-up-and-nowhere-to-go, eat your heart out.)

This “April 10 commentary”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090410TDY04302.htm by Tetsuya Harada also reports a series of snafus related to the positioning of Patriot batteries:

A PAC-3 system being moved from Hamamatsu Air Base to Camp Akita in Akita Prefecture was driven down the wrong road and onto a baseball field and damaged property as it was driven back to the right road, ending up stuck at the scene of the accident for more than three hours.

[snip]

To prepare for the recent missile launch, the SDF deployed PAC-3 missiles to five other locations, including SDF camps in Akita and Iwate prefectures and the Defense Ministry compound in Ichigaya, Tokyo, after anticipating the possible path of a North Korean missile. However, part of the missile’s path appears to have been outside the range of the PAC-3s.

Who knew? But the pick of the litter has to be this “April 7 article”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090407TDY03102.htm by Hidemichi Katsumata and Shozo Nakayama of _Yomiuri Shimbun_. It’s a proverbial gold mine of information on the flight profile and tracking of the Unha-2. “Check it out”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090407TDY03102.htm.

All Teed Up And Nowhere To Go

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So it turns out that the Sea-Based X-Band Radar wasn’t used to track the “Unha-2”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1968/unha-2td-2-launch-epic-fail, “according to the LA Times”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-north-korea-missile6-2009apr06,0,4471509.story:

bq. Officers at U.S. Forces Korea, Pacific Command in Hawaii, the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado and at the Pentagon all tracked the missile as it launched and passed over Japan and remained at their station around the clock as analysts examined the initial data from the launch. Analysts at the CIA as well as the National Counterproliferation Center remained on duty during the declared launch window, officials said. However, U.S. officials did not use one of their most powerful radar systems, the sea-based X-band radar, which would have been capable of monitoring a broader area in greater detail. Officials did not say why the X-band radar was not used. But the X-band system is a key component of the U.S. missile-defense system and its use could have been seen by other countries as provocative.

I have a better suggestion as to why it wasn’t used: “because it’s undergoing repairs”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1955/ginormous-golf-ball-ctd.

Update: Geoff Forden “discusses”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2259/dprk-cobra-ball-vs-sbx the Washington Times story on this subject. Noah Shachtman “quotes Bob Gates”:http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/04/why-gates-kept.html as saying it that it would have been too expensive to deploy SBX.

WTFMP?

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Can the “Esfahan FMP”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1982/more-about-irans-fmp make fuel for the Russian-made Bushehr light-water reactor, in the “unlikely”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1926/skepsis “event”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1959/dept-of-media-criticism that Russia were to cease supplying fresh fuel?

Deep in the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2225/irans-equinox-fmp-comes-online#comment, Harvard’s Matt Bunn says no:

bq. It’s highly unlikely that the Iranian statement that the plant can make fuel for Bushehr is correct. Making fuel for any particular reactor design requires knowledge of a bunch of fuel design details specific to that reactor design, which is typically proprietary. Iranian experts have told me that they originally expected Russia to license the fuel manufacturing technology to them for the VVER-1000 design at Bushehr, but Russia has refused to do so (preferring to keep the leash on Iran’s fuel supply in its own hands). Iran could potentially design and make unlicensed fuel for the reactor, but this could raise serious safety issues, and would certainly void any guarantees from Russia that Iran may have received regarding the safety and performance of the reactor. My guess is that they will be stuck relying on Russian fuel for years to come — which, of course, makes the argument that they need Natanz to ensure reliability of fuel supply very weak.

Somebody should tell Deputy AEOI chief Mohammed Saeedi, who in “recent televised comments”:http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8801231309, appeared to be saying that Iran could supply its own fuel for Bushehr. As if dreaming up some other purpose for indigenous LWR fuel, he also threw in this creative idea:

bq. He further pointed out that Iran could mull over plans to export nuclear fuel, saying that the move is allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rules and regulations.

I say go for it. Any number of Western governments stand ready to buy at a premium!

Update: Tongue out of cheek for just a moment, Iranian nuclear exports are forbidden by “UNSCR 1737”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/unsc_res1737-2006.pdf (2006). See numbered paragraph 7 at the top of page 4. This is probably why Saeedi pointedly refers to the NPT; lately, Iranian officials have decided that the NPT is valid and legitimate, but the decisions of the Security Council are not. Good to know, right?

And if you were wondering about that indigenous reactor, it’s still out there on the horizon somewhere:

Elsewhere, Saeedi announced that Tehran has successfully completed the preliminary designing of a 360-megawatt light-water reactor in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn.

“Now we are in the conceptual planning of the reactor and preparing the specified site for Darkhoveyn (nuclear plant),” the Iranian official underlined.

But that’s a mere detail. Don’t let that stop you from making LWR fuel as soon as possible, AEOI. The completed assemblies will be a hit on the 4th annual National Nuclear Technology Day.

The Black Bellows

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An alert TW reader “points out”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1976/the-festival-of-unenriched-fuel#comment that, as anticipated, there was a “centrifuge-related announcement”:http://en.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1315373&Lang=E on Iran’s 3rd National Nuclear Technology Day:

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Thursday on the occasion of the 4th [sic] national day of nuclear technology that the country has tested two types of new high-capacity centrifuges.

The Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said that the centrifuges were 5 to 6 times faster than the older ones. He gave no further details.

Some of us have been waiting for this announcement more or less since _last year’s_ NNTD, or before. You might recall a certain “open-source intel bonanza”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1849/ir-2s-on-display right around then. There was an odd, unresolved detail in Jeff’s analysis:

!http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/images/1082.jpg!

[snip]

The picture also contains a hand holding what looks, to me at least, like it might, might be a carbon fiber bellows — although I don’t have any reference images to compare.

A bellows, if you don’t know already, is a short cylinder meant to connect two lengths of rotor in a centrifuge. A notch (or “crimp”) allows the entire assemblage to withstand otherwise destructive vibrations when accelerating to (or decelerating from) operational speeds.

The IR-2 and IR-3 machines — prototype devices first mentioned in IAEA reports in “Feb. 2008”:http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Report_22Feb2008.pdf and “May 2008”:http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Iran_Report_26May2008.pdf, respectively — are said to have one rotor each. But there were “too many pictures”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1849/ir-2s-on-display from last NNTD seeming to depict “multi-rotor”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1851/iran-centrifuge-components machines — either disassembled or partly assembled — not to wonder.

One possible answer: because newer, multi-rotor centrifuge models were still to be fully assembled and tested. Seizing on key details in the Feb. 2008 IAEA report, plus the same mystery photo at the top of this post, ISIS flagged this possibility back in “May 2008”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_Iran_IAEA_Report_29May2008.pdf:

According to the February 2007 [sic] IAEA safeguards report, inspectors visiting Kalaye Electric were given information on four different centrifuge designs, including two subcritical rotor designs, one or more supercritical rotor designs with bellows, and a more advanced centrifuge, which is undefined in the report. The IR-2 and IR-3 are the two subcritical centrifuges. The IR-2 is an experimental model that contains a single composite rotor made from carbon fibers. The other parts of the rotor assembly are modified P-2 components (see figure 1). The IR-3 is an experimental model that seeks to increase the enrichment output by increasing the centrifuge’s length somewhat and by varying the cooling of the centrifuge rotor (see figure 2).

[snip]

Although not mentioned in the [May 2008 IAEA] report, there appears to be a third advanced centrifuge at the pilot plant. It appears to have the same diameter as the IR-2 and IR-3 but to have double or triple the length of the IR-2. Thus, it would hold two or three rotor tubes, connected by bellows (see figure 5). Prior to Iran’s suspension of the Additional Protocol in 2006, Iranian officials told the IAEA they could not make P-2 bellows. Iran has apparently overcome this obstacle (see figure 6).

(Thanks to Paul for pointing this out.)

Information has been leaking out around the edges. The AP’s George Jahn “mentioned the IR-4”:http://www.iranfocus.com/en/nuclear/diplomats-iran-seeks-to-buy-banned-carbon-fiber-17389.html last month in a story about carbon-fiber importation. (Does this mean that the mysterious fourth new centrifuge doesn’t use carbon fiber? I suspect we’ll learn soon.)

And now the NCRI has “told the WSJ”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123928982470105267.html that the new machines are “being assembled” in the basement of a “reception center” at Natanz. Too bad they weren’t exhibited to the press this year.

Update: Back in February, the AEOI’s Agazadeh said that new-generation centrifuges would soon be installed at Natanz, as “Paul has pointed out”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1913/new-iranian-centrifuges-to-be-installed.