The Boston Globe February 27, 2003
N. Korea restarts nuclear reactor
US: Defiant act intended to wring concessions
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff,
WASHINGTON - North Korea restarted its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon this week, US officials said yesterday, raising the stakes in its diplomatic showdown with the United States.
A White House spokesman said the Bush administration still hopes for a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis and believes the move was designed to wring new concessions from the United States.
''With each step it takes to advance its nuclear capability, North Korea further isolates itself from the international community,'' said the spokesman, Sean McCormack.
There were no signs that North Korea had restarted its nuclear fuel processing facility, a far more serious step because by doing so North Korea might be able to produce enough plutonium in about one month for an atomic bomb. The nuclear reactor, according to specialists, would require one year to produce spent fuel that could be turned into one bomb's worth of plutonium.
The most recent crisis began in October, when the United States confronted North Korea with evidence that it was developing a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 accord under which the North vowed to freeze its program in exchange for economic assistance and two nuclear energy reactors. North Korea acknowledged it had violated the pact and promptly broke from it.
North Korean leaders have since said they want to have direct negotiations with the United States. US officials have said that could happen, but first they want to work alongside China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan in pressuring North Korea to halt its nuclear program.
Analysts said last night that starting the nuclear reactor was pushing the crisis close to a breaking point.
''They are getting close to the top of the escalation ladder. There's not much more they can do without provoking a US military strike,'' said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an online think tank on security issues. The group's website contains several aerial photos of the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang, including two apparent test runs in January of firing up a nearby coal-fired plant. The steam from the plant provides the power to run the nuclear fuel processing facility.
US intelligence officials have estimated that North Korea may now possess one or two nuclear weapons and that it has enough spent fuel to make roughly six nuclear bombs. Pike said that North Korea's new action keeps it on a ''path of atomic ambiguity. They have not yet committed an irreversible act, but they may be rapidly approaching an irreversible act and cross a red line in the eyes of the Bush administration.''
In 1994, the Clinton administration was poised to order a strike on North Korea's nuclear complex if Pyongyang had started its nuclear fuel processing facility. Such a strategy, if the Bush administration were to embrace it, would entail great risks.
One of the greatest concerns about bombing the nuclear fuel processing facility would be the ensuing nuclear fallout. A strike now would not have serious radiological consequences, specialists believe, because the spent fuel is not highly radioactive. But that would not be the case if the nuclear fuel processing facility were restarted.
''If it was bombed, and the fuel in it was dispersed, it could create a mini-Chernobyl, and I underline the word mini because Chernobyl was dozens of times larger,'' Pike said.
In April 1986, the world's worst civil nuclear accident occurred at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, when a chain reaction in one of the reactors created explosions and a fireball that blew off the reactor's heavy lid. The accident killed more than 30 people immediately, but radiation dispersed over a 20-mile radius has since been blamed for miscarriages, birth defects, and thousands of deaths.
A US military strike might also spark many other consequences, analysts note. One of the most dangerous scenarios involves a possible conventional war between North and South Korea and casualties in the tens of thousands, analysts say.
Material from wire services was used in this report. John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe. com
Copyright © 2003, Globe Newspaper Company.
