• Military

• WMD Menu                           

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

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

North Korea May Have Secret Plutonium Plant: Report
VOA News
20 Jul 2003, 09:31 UTC

A published report says North Korea may have a second, secret facility for producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The New York Times in Sunday's edition reports that U.S. and Asian officials say strong evidence has emerged in recent weeks suggesting North Korea may have hidden the plant in a mountainous area.

The newspaper says sensors on North Korea's borders have detected elevated levels of a gas emitted when plutonium is reprocessed from nuclear fuel. It says tracking analysis indicates the krypton-85 gas is not coming from North Korea's nuclear plant at Yongbyon, but from another location.

According to one U.S. intelligence estimate cited by the Times, North Korea has 11,000-15,000 underground military-industrial sites.

The Times quotes an unnamed Bush administration official who described the latest development as "very worrisome, but still not conclusive."

White House officials have not confirmed the Times report, but Scott McClellan a spokesman for President George W. Bush said North Korea has taken escalating steps in recent months, including expelling international nuclear inspectors and restarting its nuclear facilities.

Less than two weeks ago, North Korea declared it had completed reprocessing eight-thousand spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium, enough to make a half-dozen nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have said they cannot verify the claim.

In its report, the Times says the secret facility may be one of two capable of supplying nuclear material. It says North Korean officials admitted last year they secretly built a plant to produce supplies of uranium suitable for use in weapons. U.S. officials say the facility probably will be fully operational in several years.

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.