In early February, the State Department responded to some Questions for The Record about the six party talks and North Korean denuclearization. You can “download”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/file_download/13 their response, but I want to highlight the portion discussing the state of the Yongbyon facilities. (AKA, the place with the reactor that was disabled _without_ anyone bombing anything).

You may have heard that the facilities were at the end of their useful life span when the North Koreans shut them down this past summer. State, however, says that such is not the case:

U.S. experts currently overseeing disablement activities at Yongbyon have stated that in their view, if the site had not been shut down and sealed under monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), *the facility could have remained operational and would have continued to produce additional fissile material.* Indeed, the 5 MW(e) reactor was in operation and producing plutonium up until the date of its shutdown, and several areas of the fuel rod fabrication facility were also in operation until mid-July. Although *the reprocessing plant* was not in operation at that time, it *had operated as recently as 2005 when the DPRK unloaded and reprocessed its previous core load of spent fuel.*

If the core facilities had not been shut down in July 2007, *the DPRK could have produced enough additional plutonium for several more nuclear weapons. Department of Energy experts found no indications that the site was at the end of its operational life.*

You should be seeing more work from guest-bloggers and new TW.com residents around these parts.

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First up is my successor at ACA, Peter Crail:

Stanford’s Siegfried Hecker, along with his delegation partners Joel Witt and Keith Luse, have posted “pictures”:http://newsphotos.stanford.edu/Hecker/ and “captions”:http://lis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/5220/tr08DPRKcap.pdf
from their visit to Yongbyon last month. The pictures are similar to the ones the State and Energy Departments have been showing in various briefings, but couldn’t share more widely out of concern it would piss off the North Koreans. So now that these pictures are out there, whether their concerns weren’t warranted, or if it was simply okay for them to be shared unofficially, I can’t say. The important thing is, the argument that the six party process has been able to accomplish something concrete (albeit not everything it set out to do for now) can now be publicly backed by visual evidence.

Of course, the place wasn’t exactly pristine to begin with. Kind of like Dr. Strangelove meets the Grapes of Wrath. But we also have to keep in mind that these our the conditions that some of our own technicians have been working in to get this dirty work done.

The above photo is captioned:

bq. Location where two cranes (up-down, left-right) were formerly located. These cranes transferred the spent fuel basket into the receiving hot cell and positioned the basket at the shearing station. (Minus-1 level of reprocessing plant.)

China’s “MFA has the text.”:http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t369084.htm of the “Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the [September 2005] Joint Statement.”

Here are the highlights of what the six parties agreed to after four days in late September.

*The disablement of the 5 megawatt Experimental Reactor at Yongbyon, the Reprocessing Plant (Radiochemical Laboratory) at Yongbyon and the Nuclear Fuel Rod Fabrication Facility at Yongbyon will be completed by 31 December 2007.* Specific measures recommended by the expert group will be adopted by heads of delegation in line with the principles of being acceptable to all Parties, scientific, safe, verifiable, and consistent with international standards. At the request of the other Parties, *the United States will lead disablement activities and provide the initial funding for those activities. As a first step, the US side will lead the expert group to the DPRK within the next two weeks to prepare for disablement.*

*The DPRK agreed to provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs in accordance with the February 13 agreement by 31 December 2007.*

*Recalling the commitments to begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK, the United States will fulfill its commitments to the DPRK in parallel with the DPRK’s actions based on consensus* reached at the meetings of the Working Group on Normalization of DPRK-U.S. Relations.

The DPRK and Japan will make sincere efforts to normalize their relations expeditiously in accordance with the Pyongyang Declaration, on the basis of the settlement of the unfortunate past and the outstanding issues of concern. *The DPRK and Japan committed themselves to taking specific actions* toward this end through intensive consultations between them.

In accordance with the February 13 agreement, *economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of one million tons of HFO (inclusive of the 100,000 tons of HFO already delivered) will be provided to the DPRK.* Specific modalities will be finalized through discussion by the Working Group on Economy and Energy Cooperation.

Given that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon less than year ago, not bad.

Andreas Persbo “blogged a little while back”:http://verificationthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/07/happy-reading-for-some.html about a 3 July report from IAEA DG Mohammed ElBaradei about the procedures for monitoring the shutdown and freeze of North Korea’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

The full report “is now available”:http://www.armscontrol.org/pdf/20070703_IAEAReport.pdf on ACA’s website. There’s also a “Note for Reporters”:http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2007/20070724_IAEANK.asp about next steps for denuclearizing North Korea.

Take a look.

Andreas Persbo has a good “post”:http://verificationthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-on-irt.html about North Korea’s IRT-2000 type reactor.

Read it while I find more death metal videos…

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I haven’t written much about the six-party talks as of late, but will something related up later. Meantime, this is the relevant part of the Press Communiqué from the most recent 6pt meeting, which ended today.

Essentially the parties agreed to fulfill their commitments under the February “agreement”:http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2007/20070212_NKJointStatement.asp and September 2005 “Joint Statement.”:http://www.armscontrol.org/country/northkorea/20050921_JointStatement.asp They also agreed to take steps to implement them:

1. *Before the end of August, the Working Groups* for Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Normalization of DPRK-US relations, Normalization of DPRK-Japan relations, Economy and Energy Cooperation and Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism *will convene their respective meetings to discuss plans for the implementation of the general consensus.*

2. *In early September, the Parties will hold the Second Session of the Sixth Round of the Six-Party Talks in Beijing* to hear reports of all Working Groups and work out the roadmap for the implementation of the general consensus.

3. *Following the Second Session of the Sixth Round of the Six-Party Talks, the Parties will hold a ministerial meeting in Beijing as soon as possible* to confirm and promote the implementation of the September 19 Joint Statement, the February 13 agreement and the general consensus, and explore ways and means to enhance security cooperation in Northeast Asia.

Full text is “here.”:http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t342668.htm

From KCNA:

The U.S. cites the life of the existing nuclear forces and their low technical efficiency as a main reason for developing the RRW. This is, however, nothing but a deceptive artifice to cover up its black-hearted intention. *The U.S. pretext to modernize nuclear weapons is too clumsy to convince people, taking into consideration the fact that the existing U.S. nuclear forces are confirmed to last more than a hundred years.*

*The U.S. loud-mouthed development of the RRW and the like are aimed at ensuring decisive upper hand in terms of strategic nuclear forces and thus prevailing over its major rivals and establishing an unchallenged domination over the world with nukes.* The world disturbance caused by the nuclear issue is attributable to the U.S. unreasonable policy of double standards.