- WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Central Intelligence
Agency estimates that North Korea could eventually produce enough plutonium
to make at least 50 nuclear bombs per year in the event a 1994 agreement
that places key reactors under international monitoring collapses.
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- On Thursday in Pyonyang, the state-run news service released
a statement from the Foreign Ministry saying the 1994 Agreed Framework
that places the country's nuclear reactors under international monitoring
had in fact collapsed. The article said, "Now that the U.S. unilaterally
gave up its last commitment under the framework, the DPRK acknowledges
that it is high time to decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of
the framework."
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- State Department Deputy spokesman Phil Reeker Thursday
told United Press International, "North Korea has clearly violated
the agreed framework and they are the ones who said they considered it
nullified."
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- A CIA estimate shared on Capital Hill this week says
two such reactors -- a 50 Megawatt Electronic reactor in Yongbyon and a
200 Megawatt electronic reactor in Taechon --would "generate about
275 kg per year, although it would take several years to complete construction
of these reactors." Most analysts believe it requires five to six
kilograms of plutonium to produce one nuclear bomb.
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- The 1994 agreed framework agreement placed the Yongbyon
and Taechon reactors under monitoring by the International Atomic Energy
Agency in exchange for shipments of heavy fuel oil and assistance in constructing
a light water nuclear reactor.
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- U.S. officials say North Korea's Foreign Ministry told
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly in October on a
trip to Pyongyang that the agreement was null and void. The statements
came after confirmations the North Koreans had continued a nuclear program
despite pledges not to do so under the agreement. In the past month statements
from the North Koreans suggest they may be open to a new understanding
based on a proposal for a non-aggression pact with the United States.
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- The CIA says the Yongbyon and Taechon reactors are several
years away from being fully operational. Henry Sokolski, the director of
the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (which made the unclassified
CIA estimate available to the media), a critic of the 1994 agreed framework,
said he believed it would be at least six years until the North Koreans
would be able to bring these reactors up to working condition. "In
six years who knows the country could implode," he said.
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- But the agency's estimate also says the North Koreans
could produce nuclear weapons by reprocessing fuel at the Yongbyon reactor
in storage. "Reprocessing the spent 5 MWe reactor fuel now in storage
at Yongbyon site under IAEA safeguards would recover enough plutonium for
several more weapons."
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- The CIA's estimate also says they have recently learned
North Korea is "constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade
uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational
-- which could be as soon as mid-decade."
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