Category Archives: DPRK

More Than You Wanted To Know About Magnox

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Paul “raises a really important point”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1863/north-korea-heuwhat-about-the-uf6 about North Korea’s uranium conversion capabilities. It’s a timely subject, too.

The fuel fabrication complex at Yongbyon is reported to involve a series of process lines for uranium conversion. Uranium ore concentrate (i.e., yellowcake) is converted to UO3, which is converted to UO2, which is converted to green salt (UF4), which is then converted to metal to produce Magnox fuel rods. (“Have a look”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2179/nork-fuel-rod.)

The metallic fuel is natural (unenriched) uranium, which is cast into cylindrical shapes, machined smooth, and placed inside “cans” made of a magnesium alloy. “Here’s how the last conversion step is done in the UK”:http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Products_&_Services/docs/flysheets/NF-FE-0010.pdf:

Uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) is converted to uranium metal for Magnox fuel by mixing it with magnesium metal. When heated in a furnace to 600oC, the UF4 and magnesium react together. Uranium melts and flows into a catchpot at the bottom of the furnace and a layer of fluoride slag forms on the top. After cooling, the billet of uranium is separated from the slag, remelted, and cast into rods.

And that’s why Yongbyon doesn’t have a UF6 process line (that anyone knows about). Now you know.

Now, as far as anyone knows, the only place this process has taken place in recent years, besides Yongbyon, is the “Springfields”:http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Businesses/nuclear_fuel/springfields_site.shtm facility in Preston, Lancashire, England.

This is a timely subject because the IAEA’s latest report on Syria, “GOV/2009/6”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/file_download/159/Syria.pdf, mainly concerns the uranium traces found at the suspect site in the wadi at al-Kibar (AKA Dair Alzour), which appears for all the world to have been a Yongbyon-style Magnox reactor. It says that

analysis of the environmental samples taken from the Dair Alzour site revealed a significant number of anthropogenic natural uranium particles (i.e. produced as a result of chemical processing)…

Now, perhaps these particles weren’t traces of Magnox fuel or one of the related compounds mentioned above. But if they were from Magnox fuel, there are only three possible sources I can think of:

Now consider the following excerpt from the IAEA’s Syria report of November 2008, “GOV/2008/60”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/file_download/142/gov2008-60.pdf:

14. Satellite imagery and other information available to the Agency concerning installations at the three other locations in Syria referred to above suggest that those locations may be of relevance to the activities at the Dair Alzour site. As indicated above, the Agency requested access to the three locations on 2 May 2008. Analysis of satellite imagery taken of these locations indicates that landscaping activities and the removal of large containers took place shortly after the Agency’s request for access. While these activities may be unrelated to the Dair Alzour site, it would be helpful if Syria were to provide an explanation for these activities and to permit the Agency to visit the three locations.

Unfortunately, these three locations are mentioned only glancingly in GOV/2009/6. It doesn’t sound as if access has been granted, or will be anytime soon. And as for those “large containers,” what was in them and where they went is anybody’s guess.

Congratulations. You made it to the “musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K18p1tDHtxI&feature=related.

NK HEU Plant?

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According to the South Korean newspaper Dong-a Ilbo, North Korea has a secret underground uranium enrichment facility, right there at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. The heavily scrutinized Yongbyon nuclear complex. The story is summarized “here”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iUMkh8pqycilFWddJSqYHe0psvcg.

Seriously, Yongbyon? Why not just put it under the National Mall?

This is actually just the latest in a series of reports to this effect. “The location moves around quite a bit, but the theme is consistent”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1418/size-matters.

And let’s not forget “Kumchang-ri”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/598/david-sanger-two-time-loser-on-kilju-and-kumchang-ri.

Part-Time Envoy?

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From tonight’s _Nelson Report_:

The other night we reported, correctly, that Tufts Fletcher School dean Steve Bosworth will be the Special Envoy for N. Korea, but we need to amend, or extend that information with the following:

Bosworth will be working part-time, not full-time, and he’ll continue his job as dean. When we wrote “confirmed” we meant to imply that, after Gen. Zinni, it’s trust but verify. This job will NOT be “Senate” confirmed.

Sung Kim, A/S Chris Hill’s special envoy for the 6-party talks, will be the primary negotiator , but on those occasions when high-level negotiations are needed, Bosworth will be called-in as the Special Envoy.

We would be less than candid if we did not also report that while the Korea commentariat thinks the world of Bosworth, there is concern that his post NOT being Senate confirmed makes it questionable he would have the top-level access required to achieve real decisions with N. Korea.

Go figure.

Bosworth’s profile is “here”:http://fletcher.tufts.edu/faculty/bosworth/profile.asp.

A previous mention of the envoy rumors is “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1844/track-i-and-a-half-in-pyongyang.

“Musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6LLGePYwM.

HRC on DPRK HEU, Pu

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The Secretary of State has something to say about fissile material in North Korea, but the transcript is not yet online. [Update: here’s the “transcript”:http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/02/117345.htm.] From “Glenn Kessler”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021501790.html:

“There is a debate within the intelligence community as to exactly the extent of the highly enriched uranium program,” Clinton told reporters traveling with her to Asia on her first voyage as the chief U.S. diplomat.

[snip]

“The Agreed Framework was torn up on the basis of the concerns about the highly enriched uranium program,” Clinton said. “There is no debate that, once the Agreed Framework was torn up, the North Koreans began to reprocess plutonium with a vengeance because all bets were off. The result is they now have nuclear weapons, which they did not have before.”

[snip]

“My goal is the denuclearization of North Korea,” Clinton said. “That means a verifiably complete accounting of whatever programs they have and the removal of the reprocessed plutonium that they were able to achieve because they were given the opportunity to do so.”

“When they move forward” on ending the program, she added, “we have a great openness to working with them,” including “a willingness to help the people of North Korea.”

Perhaps Secretary Clinton meant to say that the North Koreans have more nuclear weapons than before the Agreed Framework was torn up. (If memory serves — this was back in late 2002 — the North Koreans were the first to declare the AF dead, but remained within the NPT and kept Yongbyon on ice until the U.S. cut off HFO deliveries.) But perhaps she meant exactly what she said.

Jeff has already “laid out the issue”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1907/north-korean-reprocessing-campaigns, so it needn’t be explained all over again here.

IC on North Korea: No Consensus on HEU

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Speaking of primary sources, here’s the “Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community”:http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090212_testimony.pdf (PDF). It’s already gotten a great deal of attention for A) emphasizing the threat posed by the _global_ — i.e., not just national — economic crisis, and B) stating that al-Qaida in Pakistan has suffered “a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001” at the, um, hands of “America’s flying killer robots”:http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/predator/. (The “UK’s, too”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/04/raf_reaper_reaps_at_last/.) But all that’s been covered elsewhere. Instead, I’d like to draw your attention to how the assessment deals with North Korea.

Right after the major sections on the global economic crisis and “turning the corner” on al-Qaida are some words about “the Arc of Instability.” This seems to be the successor to such colorful geo-political constructs as the “Axis of Evil”:http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html and the “Shi’ite Crescent”:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,518131,00.html. Basically, it’s the Middle East plus Pakistan and Afghanistan. Notice which perennial trouble spot is missing!

This is followed by “Rising Asia.” The “rising” part means China and India, but eventually — starting on page 24 in a 45-page document — we do reach a sub-section on North Korea and its nuclear program:

…Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and proliferation behavior threaten to destabilize East Asia. The North’s October 2006 nuclear test is consistent with our longstanding assessment that it had produced a nuclear device. Prior to the test, we assessed that North Korea produced enough plutonium for at least a half dozen nuclear weapons. The IC continues to assess North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment capability in the past. Some in the Intelligence Community have increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program.

And it goes on for a bit from there. But what leaps out (especially with the added emphasis) is the divided and equivocal statement on uranium enrichment.

Update: I forgot to mention it, but this is not entirely new news. For background, see “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2153/nork-heu-3-12-years-old, “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2156/more-on-nork-heu, and “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2163/yet-more-on-nork-heu.

Pointing Fingers at Russia

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Back in a previous blogging existence, I observed that “nobody is attributing new developments in Iranian missile technology to Russia”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2013/irans-ashura-missile-mystery — at least, not yet.

Now the inevitable seems to have begun, deep in one of the recent “comment marathons”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2181/why-would-a-2-stage-safir-be-surprising#comment at ACW:

I can’t help but wonder if this all isn’t about “more modern materials, tools and computing power”, but rather “expert russian rocket scientists working in their iranian-financed north-korean exile-design-bureau on improving ancient soviet technology secretly provided by modern-day russia”…

Those in the know will recognize this as an idea associated with “Robert Schmucker”:http://www.schmucker.de/, a Munich-based technology consultant and entrepreneur. Schmucker maintains that the Nodong/Shihab-3/Ghauri missile is actually a heretofore unknown device of Soviet vintage, with the designs and engineering provided to North Korea by corrupt and enterprising Russians. The AQ Khanski network, as it were.

(See the 17th slide of this “Schmucker briefing”:http://www.prif.org/fileadmin/content-ABM/schmucker.pdf for an instance of this claim.)

Although wrong, this idea is certainly intriguing and not as ridiculous as it might seem. Here is why. “Daniel Sneider”:http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/danielcsneider/ wrote in the San Jose Mercury News of July 25, 2006:

I encountered one crucial tentacle of Kim’s program some 14 years ago, in late October of 1992.

A group of 64 Russian rocket scientists, accompanied by their wives and children, were stopped just as they were about to board a flight to North Korea. The scientists were employees of a super-secret facility in the Urals, the V.P. Makeyev Design Bureau, responsible for the development of the Soviet Union’s submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

As the bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, I pieced the story together later from Russian press accounts and interviews with the scientists and others. A middleman with apparent official backing had offered the bureau, starving for orders and left adrift by the sudden end of the Cold War, work in North Korea.

Scientists who were making the equivalent of $15 a month jumped at offers of up to $4,000 a month to help a former Soviet ally. In the spring, a group of 10 scientists had gone for an initial foray. The Koreans, one of the scientists told me, initially never directly asked about nuclear warheads or missile designs. They claimed only to be interested in rocket science.

The Russians came home that fall and signed up dozens of their comrades as recruits. But the project was not officially sanctioned, and the KGB held them outside of Moscow for two months while the broker tried to re-negotiate their departure. Russian officials later described the North Koreans’ aim, without mentioning them by name, as an attempt to build “combat missile complexes that could carry nuclear weapons.”

North Korea began with copies of Soviet short-range Scud missiles and moved on to medium-range “Nodong” missiles, but they lacked the range and accuracy to meet Kim’s target. A decade after the airport incident, in 2003, credible reports emerged that the North Koreans were deploying a new, far more accurate missile based on the Soviet SS-N-6, a submarine-launched rocket developed by Makeyev in the 1960s. The Nodong-2, as some labeled it, could reach all U.S. bases in Japan and possibly even to Guam.

Now, there are just a couple of problems with extending the SS-N-6 paradigm to the Nodong.

First, the “work on the Nodong goes back to the late 1980s”:http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Missile/65_681.html, before the collapse of the Soviet Union set in motion the dynamics described by Sneider.

Second, the Soviet precursor to the Nodong doesn’t exist. It’s a figment.

Applying the same kind of reasoning to Iran’s new generation of post-Scud, post-Nodong space launchers/ballistic missiles is still more problematic, since these devices “don’t seem to exist in North Korea”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2013/irans-ashura-missile-mystery, where the nefarious Khanski Gang is supposedly at work.

Here’s a different idea: if there are indications of Russian technology in the Iranian missile program, it’s because “the Iranians had considerable access to Russian expertise and training in the 1990s”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/1998_03/rusiran — not because devices were transferred to them lock, stock, and barrel.

I hesitate to say it, but there does still seem to be some resistance out there to the idea that anyone not severely melatonin melanin-challenged can work with sophisticated technologies…

Just saying.

North Korea Standing Pat?

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From this evening’s _Nelson Report:_

NK POLICY…lots of studies still on-working as the Obama folks, teams still forming, try to assess where we are, and what to do to get where we want.

Increasingly, the “insider/expert’s debate” has shifted toward rueful discussion of whether the US must now face the reality of the DPRK as a nuclear state, given what its officials says it would take to achieve “denuclearization”.

The alternative seems to be some variation of the current negotiating track…with its implied continuation of the flow of inducements for fear of making a bad situation worse if they are stopped.

Increasingly, we hear US experts previously very “pro-engagement” questioning the negotiation/inducements approach.

The following preliminary report from a member of last weeks’ “private experts” “delegation to Pyongyang”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1844/track-i-and-a-half-in-pyongyang addresses the above concerns en passant, and was prepared at our request. It is, by agreement, anonymous.

It will be fundamentally disquieting to everyone involved:

“Viewed from Pyongyang, the arcane Beltway debates about the North Korea seem increasingly wide of the mark. Our interlocutors made repeatedly clear that the nuclear test and the claims of weaponization of the North’s plutonium inventory mark a fundamental divide in Pyongyang’s thinking and actions.

“Though the officials with whom we met insisted that ‘the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’ remains Pyongyang’s long-term strategic objective, this goal seems premised on expectations so fanciful as to vanish into the mists of time.

“The essential message is that the North is now a state in possession of nuclear weapons, and that it’s time for the U.S. to accept this reality; the weapons will not go away anytime soon. This claim does not mean that negotiations are irrelevant.

“For example, the full disabling of the Yongbyon reactor and associated facilities would be a significant accomplishment, and the North Koreans gave every indication of wanting to proceed to completion, though they do not see a verification protocol as part of the Phase 2 deal.

“The essential message: you fulfill your objectives (i.e., on the provision of energy), and we’ll fulfill ours. The converse seems equally true, though the challenges of reconstituting the Yongbyon complex are ever more daunting, if not insuperable.

“Assuming completion, however, the challenges will then only increase. Expectations of the provision of light water reactors (as a condition for dismantlement) are again in play, and in some statements to this effect seemed virtually non-negotiable. This may well be little more than a marker for future negotiations, but Pyongyang has few incentives to remove items from the diplomatic agenda before determining what various items might be worth.

“Pending the removal of the ‘U.S. nuclear threat,’ Pyongyang insists that it must continue to enhance its defense and deterrence capabilities, though reports of an impending missile test were left somewhat ambiguous.

“The North Koreans recognized that the Obama Administration is reviewing its approach to future negotiations, and they seem prepared to be patient, at least for now.

“Their preferred outcome would give predominant weight to the bilateral relationship with the United States, minimizing or even dispensing with the Six Party process.

“The latter outcome would be clearly unacceptable to the United States and the other four participants in the negotiations, a point that was made repeatedly clear by all delegation members. But (unlike the 1990s) the North Koreans seemed in no particular hurry to proceed with full diplomatic relations with Washington, though this too may be a pose.

“A more disquieting prospect is the utter trashing of relations with the Lee Myong Bak administration. (By comparison, the criticisms of Japan seemed far more temperate.) This was not characterized as a ‘hardline’ position, but an appropriate response to actions by the South, including the repeated speculations about Kim Jong Il’s health, which were viewed as disrespectful to the ‘Great General’.

“As our delegation made clear, an outcome that leaves inter-Korean relations and Japan-North Korea relations in a deep freeze is demonstrably unacceptable to the United States. It was difficult to tell if the North Koreans internalized this argument, but it was conveyed unambiguously.

“In a longer run sense, the DPRK’s declared strategy presumes the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, the invalidation of the U.S. alliance, and the development of a U.S.-North Korean ‘strategic relationship’, for which Pyongyang would denuclearize in return.

“Is this a serious negotiating stance, or does the North’s seeming bravado and assurance mask deeper anxieties about the fate of their system?

“There may be some modest evidence of change in North Korea, especially in the increasing monetization of the economy for those able to secure even modest amounts of hard currency, but the prospects for the DPRK’s citizenry remain deeply disquieting, with no obvious way out.

“The fundamental questions for the United States and for North Korea’s neighbors persist: how can outside powers credibly negotiate with Pyongyang without validating its claims to nuclear weapons status? And are the self referential leaders of the DPRK truly prepared for normal relations with the outside world, beginning most immediately with the ROK?”

Track I and a Half in Pyongyang

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Tonight’s “Presidential press conference”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1843/obama-on-nuclear-diplomacy touched on three hot nuclear-diplomacy issues: engaging Iran, launching post-START talks with Russia, and strengthening the nonproliferation treaty regime.

One subject not touched on was North Korea. Intriguingly, though, a revolving procession of U.S. academics and think-tankers in and out of Pyongyang is now underway, with each delegation followed shortly by the next, or so it seems. Two such delegations are mentioned “here”:http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090209_4835.php, and I’ve also heard of another.

This isn’t exactly Track II diplomacy, since the NK interlocutors are government officials — call it Track I and Half.

This sort of thing has been going on for years, actually, but the pace seems to have picked up. The “recently concluded visit led by Stephen Bosworth”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIUMgKnfmtyg8T8wMAghB4V2lInAD966LP2O0 of Tufts University may be of special interest, since he’s allegedly in line to be a “special envoy to North Korea”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQU3AClp9uLyW4tZ44e9D6nn1Uww.

_Update: The reports about Bosworth appear to be pure speculation and rumor._

Update II: Now Bosworth supposedly will be a “part-time envoy”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1861/part-time-envoy.

This year’s top wonk memento has got to be an “Air Koryo”:http://www.korea-dpr.com//Air%20Koryo/about.htm air sickness bag.

Parsing Biden at Wehrkunde

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From the Vice President’s “speech at the annual Munich Security Conference”:http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/rede.php?menu_2009=&menu_konferenzen=&sprache=en&id=238:

We will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven to work and cost effective.

We will do so in consultation with our NATO allies and Russia.

Nothing really new here, except possibly one thing. I’m probably reading too much into this: it appeared in a speech given in Munich, in a section of the speech concerning NATO. But still, did you notice? Joe Biden’s brief discussion of missile defense made no mention whatsoever of North Korea.

Verfication Plan for North Korea

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The _WP_ has a “copy”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/kesslerdoc_092608.pdf?sid=ST2008092600020&s_pos=list of the U.S.-proposed scheme for verifying the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. You may have “heard”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2008/prn200813.html that the North Koreans were a little unhappy with it.

Appropriately describing the plan as “far-reaching,” the accompanying “article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504380.html notes that

bq. U.S. verification experts were not even closely consulted when the six nations involved in the talks concluded a vague agreement on how verification might proceed. But they were given the lead role in drafting the U.S. document presented to North Korea in July.

About 5 years ago, if memory serves, I saw some of State’s VCI people talk about a verification scheme for North Korea. It was apparent then that they were for _extensive_ verification. So the character of this proposal is, to me, unsurprising.