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Scientist: NKorea has 'stunning' new nuke facility
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Siegfried Hecker AP – In this Nov. 13, 2010, photo, American nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, left, speaks to media upon …
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By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press Foster Klug, Associated Press – 53 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's claim of a new, highly sophisticated uranium enrichment facility could be a ploy to win concessions in nuclear talks or an attempt to bolster leader Kim Jong Il's apparent heir.
But whatever the reason for the revelation, which a seasoned American nuclear scientist called "stunning," it provides a new set of worries for the Obama administration, which is sending its special envoy on North Korea for talks with officials in South Korea, Japan and China this week.
The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report posted Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to the North's main Yongbyon atomic complex to a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility. It had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges, he said, and the North told him it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor.
Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North's secretive nuclear program, said the program had been built in secret and with remarkable speed.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said uranium enrichment activities would violate U.N. resolutions and agreements by North Korea over its nuclear program.
"From my perspective, it's North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilizing for the region. It confirms or validates the concern we've had for years about their enriching uranium," Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
The Obama administration has shunned direct negotiations with North Korea following its nuclear and missile tests last year and in the wake of an international finding that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.
North Korea told Hecker it began construction on the centrifuges in April 2009 and finished only a few days before the scientist's Nov. 12 visit.
Hecker said his first glimpse of the North's new centrifuges was "stunning."
"Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us," wrote Hecker, a Stanford University professor.
Hecker described the control room as "astonishingly modern," writing that, unlike other North Korean facilities, it "would fit into any modern American processing facility."
The facilities appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, Hecker said. He saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium enrichment facilities "could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel."
Uranium enrichment would give the North a second way to make atomic bombs, in addition to its known plutonium-based program. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in nuclear weapons. Hecker's findings were first reported in The New York Times.
U.S. nuclear envoy Stephen Bosworth's trip to Asia for talks on North Korea comes as new satellite images show construction under way at Yongbyon. That, combined with reports from Hecker and another American expert who recently traveled to the atomic complex, appear to show that the North is keeping its pledge to build a nuclear power reactor.
North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel. Hecker, and Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea, have said that construction has begun.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies, said the North's uranium disclosure is meant to force the United States back into nuclear negotiations.
The disclosure, Yang said, also is aimed at a domestic audience during the succession process. "The North wants to muster loyalty among military generals by showing them the North will continue to bolster its nuclear deterrent and uphold its military-first policy," Yang said.
Light-water reactors are ostensibly for civilian energy purposes, but such a power plant would give the North a reason to enrich uranium. While light-water reactors are considered less prone to misuse than heavy-water reactors, once the process of uranium enrichment is mastered, it is relatively easy to enrich further to weapons-grade levels.
North Korea said last year it was in the final stage of enriching uranium, sparking worries that the country may add uranium-based weapons to its stockpile of bombs made from plutonium. Experts say the North has yielded enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half dozen atomic bombs.
Uranium can be enriched in relatively inconspicuous factories that are better able to evade spy satellite detection, according to U.S. and South Korean experts. Uranium-based bombs may also work without requiring test explosions like the two carried out by North Korea in 2006 and 2009 for plutonium-based weapons.
Hecker said the North Koreans emphasized that the centrifuge facility was operating; although he couldn't verify that statement, he said "it was not inconsistent with what we saw."
"The only hope" for dealing with the North's nuclear program "appears to be engagement," he wrote, calling a military attack "out of the question" and more sanctions "likewise a dead end."
Many questions are still unanswered about North Korea's nuclear program, Hecker wrote, including whether the North is really pursuing nuclear electricity, whether it's abandoning plutonium production, how it obtained such sophisticated centrifuge technology, and why it's revealing the facilities now.
"One thing is certain," he said. "These revelations will cause a political firestorm."
___
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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http://cisac.stanford.edu/
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'THE Axis of Idiots'
Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the runner-in-chief.
Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the U.S.S. Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001.
John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam . Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq . You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, the same words you used to describe Vietnam . You're a fake. You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq, like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.
John Murtha, you said our military was broken. You said we can't win militarily in Iraq . You accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa . Okinawa, Jo hn ? And the Democrats call you their military expert! Are you sure you didn't suffer a traumatic brain injury while you were off building your war hero resume? You're a sad, pitiable, corrupt and washed up politician. You're not a Marine, sir. You wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's butt. You're a phony and a disgrace. Run away, Jo hn ..
Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot , who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Now you want to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run.
Ted Kennedy, for days on end you held poster-sized pictures from Abu Ghraib in front of any available television camera. Al Jazeera quoted you saying that Iraqi's torture chambers were open under new management. Did you see the news, Teddy? The Islamic Nazis demonstrated another beheading for you. If you truly supported our troops, you'd show the world poster-sized pictures of that atrocity and demand the annihilation of it. Your legislation stripping support from the South Vietnamese led to a communist victory there. You're a bloated, drunken fool bent on repeating the same historical blunder that turned freedom-seeking people over to homicidal, genoc idal maniacs. To paraphrase Jo hn Murtha, all while sitting on your wide, gin-soaked rear-end in Washington
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it now on their turf, than later on ours after they have gained both strength and momentum.
American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gather
Scientist: NKorea has 'stunning' new nuke facility
AP
*
Buzz up!
*
Siegfried Hecker AP – In this Nov. 13, 2010, photo, American nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, left, speaks to media upon …
* North Korea Slideshow:North Korea
* Pyongyang Back in Nuclear Business? Play Video North Korea Video:Pyongyang Back in Nuclear Business? FOX News
By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press Foster Klug, Associated Press – 53 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's claim of a new, highly sophisticated uranium enrichment facility could be a ploy to win concessions in nuclear talks or an attempt to bolster leader Kim Jong Il's apparent heir.
But whatever the reason for the revelation, which a seasoned American nuclear scientist called "stunning," it provides a new set of worries for the Obama administration, which is sending its special envoy on North Korea for talks with officials in South Korea, Japan and China this week.
The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report posted Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to the North's main Yongbyon atomic complex to a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility. It had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges, he said, and the North told him it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor.
Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North's secretive nuclear program, said the program had been built in secret and with remarkable speed.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said uranium enrichment activities would violate U.N. resolutions and agreements by North Korea over its nuclear program.
"From my perspective, it's North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilizing for the region. It confirms or validates the concern we've had for years about their enriching uranium," Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
The Obama administration has shunned direct negotiations with North Korea following its nuclear and missile tests last year and in the wake of an international finding that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.
North Korea told Hecker it began construction on the centrifuges in April 2009 and finished only a few days before the scientist's Nov. 12 visit.
Hecker said his first glimpse of the North's new centrifuges was "stunning."
"Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us," wrote Hecker, a Stanford University professor.
Hecker described the control room as "astonishingly modern," writing that, unlike other North Korean facilities, it "would fit into any modern American processing facility."
The facilities appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, Hecker said. He saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium enrichment facilities "could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel."
Uranium enrichment would give the North a second way to make atomic bombs, in addition to its known plutonium-based program. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in nuclear weapons. Hecker's findings were first reported in The New York Times.
U.S. nuclear envoy Stephen Bosworth's trip to Asia for talks on North Korea comes as new satellite images show construction under way at Yongbyon. That, combined with reports from Hecker and another American expert who recently traveled to the atomic complex, appear to show that the North is keeping its pledge to build a nuclear power reactor.
North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel. Hecker, and Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea, have said that construction has begun.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies, said the North's uranium disclosure is meant to force the United States back into nuclear negotiations.
The disclosure, Yang said, also is aimed at a domestic audience during the succession process. "The North wants to muster loyalty among military generals by showing them the North will continue to bolster its nuclear deterrent and uphold its military-first policy," Yang said.
Light-water reactors are ostensibly for civilian energy purposes, but such a power plant would give the North a reason to enrich uranium. While light-water reactors are considered less prone to misuse than heavy-water reactors, once the process of uranium enrichment is mastered, it is relatively easy to enrich further to weapons-grade levels.
North Korea said last year it was in the final stage of enriching uranium, sparking worries that the country may add uranium-based weapons to its stockpile of bombs made from plutonium. Experts say the North has yielded enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half dozen atomic bombs.
Uranium can be enriched in relatively inconspicuous factories that are better able to evade spy satellite detection, according to U.S. and South Korean experts. Uranium-based bombs may also work without requiring test explosions like the two carried out by North Korea in 2006 and 2009 for plutonium-based weapons.
Hecker said the North Koreans emphasized that the centrifuge facility was operating; although he couldn't verify that statement, he said "it was not inconsistent with what we saw."
"The only hope" for dealing with the North's nuclear program "appears to be engagement," he wrote, calling a military attack "out of the question" and more sanctions "likewise a dead end."
Many questions are still unanswered about North Korea's nuclear program, Hecker wrote, including whether the North is really pursuing nuclear electricity, whether it's abandoning plutonium production, how it obtained such sophisticated centrifuge technology, and why it's revealing the facilities now.
"One thing is certain," he said. "These revelations will cause a political firestorm."
___
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Online:
http://cisac.stanford.edu/
Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
*
Buzz up!
*
Explore Related Content
1. Article: N.Korea showed US scientist new nuclear plant … North Korea AFP
2.
Report: North Korea claims it is …
- A State Department team is traveling to South Korea Sunday, after a U.S … Full Story CNN
3. Photo in Slideshow: Iran says two rebel leaders killed in Kurdish city
4. Photo in Slideshow: Siegfried Hecker
5. Photo in Slideshow: File photo of Siegfried Hecker in Beijing
6. . Play Video Video: Pyongyang Back in Nuclear Business? … North Korea
7. Photo: Iran's Leyla Rajabi competes in the women's shot put final at the …
8. Article: U.S. envoy due in Asia amid new North Korea … uranium enrichment Reuters
9.
North Korea Secretly Built Large …
- North Korea secretly and quickly built a highly sophisticated facility to enrich … Full Story Fox News
10. Photo: File photo of Siegfried Hecker in Beijing
11. . Play Video Video: Security lockdown in Seoul as G20 summit kicks off … North Korea
12. Photo in Slideshow: Iran's President Ahmadinejad attends an official meeting in …
More on North Korea
* North Korea centrifuges confirm concerns: military Reuters
* Mullen: NKorea report shows belligerent behavior AP
* North Korea triggers concern with new nuclear plant AFP
More »
More...
* World Video: Madagascar army quells coup attempt Reuters
* World Video: Worker freed from underwater shaft Reuters
* World Video: Israeli settlers protest U.S. offer Reuters
715 Comments
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K. 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
'THE Axis of Idiots'
Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the runner-in-chief.
Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the U.S.S. Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001.
John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam . Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq . You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, the same words you used to describe Vietnam . You're a fake. You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq, like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.
John Murtha, you said our military was broken. You said we can't win militarily in Iraq . You accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa . Okinawa, Jo hn ? And the Democrats call you their military expert! Are you sure you didn't suffer a traumatic brain injury while you were off building your war hero resume? You're a sad, pitiable, corrupt and washed up politician. You're not a Marine, sir. You wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's butt. You're a phony and a disgrace. Run away, Jo hn ..
Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot , who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Now you want to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run.
Ted Kennedy, for days on end you held poster-sized pictures from Abu Ghraib in front of any available television camera. Al Jazeera quoted you saying that Iraqi's torture chambers were open under new management. Did you see the news, Teddy? The Islamic Nazis demonstrated another beheading for you. If you truly supported our troops, you'd show the world poster-sized pictures of that atrocity and demand the annihilation of it. Your legislation stripping support from the South Vietnamese led to a communist victory there. You're a bloated, drunken fool bent on repeating the same historical blunder that turned freedom-seeking people over to homicidal, genoc idal maniacs. To paraphrase Jo hn Murtha, all while sitting on your wide, gin-soaked rear-end in Washington
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it now on their turf, than later on ours after they have gained both strength and momentum.
American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gather
