Experts: North Korea building new nuclear reactor

Such light-water reactors usually used to generate electricity, but some worry that it could produce plutonium for weapons.

By Mark McDonald

SEOUL, South Korea — New satellite images of a nuclear site and a recent visit by two U.S. experts suggest that North Korea has started work on a new reactor.

The Institute for Science and International Security, a nuclear research group in Washington, said it had obtained photographs showing "construction activity at the site of the destroyed cooling tower for the disabled reactor" at Yongbyon.

Charles Pritchard, a former special envoy for negotiations with North Korea who is the president of the Korea Economic Institute, a policy group, toured the Yongbyon site during a five-day trip to North Korea this month. He said he was told by North Korean officials that they were building an experimental light-water reactor.

Pritchard was accompanied by Siegfried Hecker, emeritus director of Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory. Hecker told the security institute that "the new construction seen in the satellite imagery is indeed the construction of the experimental light-water reactor."

Though light-water reactors are generally used to generate electricity for civilian purposes, North Korea's facility could be employed to make nuclear weapons-grade plutonium, said David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security.

North Korea demolished the cooling tower at its gas-graphite reactor at the Yongbyon complex in 2008 as part of a now-lapsed disarmament agreement. The old Yongbyon reactor, which was used to produce plutonium, remains inoperative, according to Pritchard.

Additional material from The Washington Post.

source: http://www.statesman.com