• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

[Page: E1622]

• Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, when the House further considers the Export Administration Act, I hope we will adopt a sense-of-the-Congress amendment I have proposed, against providing nuclear powerplants to North Korea.

• Following is an op ed from today's Washington Post that makes some of the arguments against the idea of sharing light-water reactors with North Korea.

The idea has gotten about that there is a neat technical fix to the threat posed by North Korea's homemade nuclear reactors. This involves replacing their reactors, which are fueled with natural uranium and geared to producing plutonium, with ones like ours, which are more `proliferation resistant.' It was explained in the headline of a recent Post story: `U.S. to Dangle Prospect Reactor at N. Korea; Deal Would Allow Nuclear Plant for Electricity' [front page, July 7]. Jimmy Carter is said to have supported this idea in his talks with North Korea.

It was actually the North Koreans who came up with the offer to switch technologies. During U.S.-North Korean talks a year ago, they said they would rather have U.S.-style power reactors (called light-water reactors, or LWRs) than the outmoded ones they possess. Because the two reactors they are building would soon multiply their weapon potential many times, this offer by the North Koreans seemed almost too good to be true.

In a joint communique of July 19, 1993, the United States agreed that if the `nuclear issue' could be resolved finally, then it was `prepared to support the introduction of LWRs and to explore with the [North Koreans] ways in which LWRs could be obtained.' A year later,

• the idea seems to be very much alive. The Post story cited above quotes a `senior U.S. official' as saying `the attitude is, if that's what they want, that's what we'll give them.'

• We had better stop and think.

• Sure, it would be great if we would switch their nuclear plants into less threatening ones with a snap of our fingers. But the reality of such an exchange is more tangled than it might appear, and the attempt would likely do more harm than good.

• To begin with, for the United States to provide technology and assist with financing (North Korea is without funds or credit), the president would have to override our strict statutory standards for nuclear exports. He would have to make favorable findings about North Korea that, in effect, would make us accomplices to its violations of Nonproliferation Treaty inspection rules.

• By thus buying off an international troublemaker, we would be giving the wrong idea to others similarly inclined (as well as to those who have played by the rules). The undermining of international nuclear export rules would not be lessened if we sent U.S. technology through another country with weaker export rules (South Korea has been mentioned), or (this is the latest proposal) if we paid the Russians to export their version of LWRs to the North Koreans.

• In an era when we are extolling the virtues of the marketplace, it is also more than a little inconsistent to indulge the technological vanities of dictators for uneconomic prestige projects. A nuclear power plant of even modest size needs an infrastructure of people and equipment and a sizable and secure electrical grid that--from everything one hears--is lacking in the North. To develop these, to train large numbers of North Koreans and to build a plant would take most of a decade. Do we really want to do this?

• If North Korea is willing to trade its outmoded nuclear plants for their modern electrical equivalent, then coal-fired plants make such more sense. And more than a new generation

• of nuclear plants, the North Koreans need to improve the efficiency of the way they transmit and use electricity. Such changes would be relatively cheap and would produce results much faster, perhaps within a year. Whether North Korea seeks genuine improvements or prefers an uneconomic prestige nuclear project is a test of its goodwill and judgment.

• It will no doubt be argued that, given the nature of the North Korean regime, a prestige project from the West is exactly what is needed to get it off its dangerous course toward nuclear weapons. Moreover, the multi-year duration of the project--and its dependence on enriched uranium fuel, which North Korea would have to import from one of the advanced countries--would allow us to remain in control. The same factors would seem to give the North Koreans the incentive to hold up their end of the bargain.

• Let us not, however, deceive ourselves. Barring a miraculous change in the regime (in which case the deal would be unnecessary), the North Koreans are not likely to give up their plutonium production potential during the 10-year construction of replacement reactors. And they will likely want a sufficient stockpile of enriched uranium fuel so they will not be at our mercy when those reactors do operate.

• Instead of being under our control, the project is likely to develop strong constituencies and to take on a life of its own. We should not imagine that we would be able to turn it off if the North Koreans did not keep their promises. If history is any guide, we would be the hostages, not the North Koreans.

• In the end, what is wrong with the LWR proposal is that it presumes a level of goodwill on North Korea's part that, were it present, would obviate the need for the proposal. If the North Koreans are interested in electricity, there are much cheaper, better and safer ways to provide it. If they insist on a prestige nuclear project, we can be sure the deal is, in fact, too good to be true. There are no neat technological fixes to the present impasse. What is needed is change in North Korea.

[Page: E1623]

END