Expert: Reactor gives N. Korea more power

WASHINGTON — North Korea’s restart of a plutonium reactor could strengthen not just its nuclear weapons program but also its negotiating position if aid-for-disarmament talks resume, a top U.S. expert says.

But Siegfried Hecker, a scientist who has previously been granted unusual access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities, says that by putting the five-megawatt reactor at the Nyongbyon complex back into action after disabling it in 2007, the North has complicated any future talks immensely.

Hecker cited recent satellite imagery indicating the reactor has restarted.

North Korea conducted a long-range rocket launch last December and a nuclear test explosion in February. After threatening pre-emptive strikes, the North has toned down its threats and called for a resumption of nuclear talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S. The North withdrew from those talks five years ago.

There’s little prospect of fresh talks soon. Washington is demanding concrete steps first by the North to show it is willing to denuclearize. North Korea says that because of a “hostile” U.S. policy, it needs nuclear weapons to deter aggression by American forces based in South Korea.

Hecker and some colleagues from Stanford University are believed to have been the last foreigners to visit Nyongbyon in November 2010. At that time, North Korea revealed to them a uranium enrichment workshop, showing that the reclusive nation has a second way to produce fissile material for bombs.

Little is yet known about the uranium program, but the reactor restart showed North Korea is “keeping the plutoniumbomb option alive,” Hecker said. The most likely scenario is that the North would operate it for two years and then extract plutonium a year later — a cycle it could repeat multiple times, he said.

“We can expect Pyongyang to gain one bomb’s worth of plutonium per year as long as it stays on this path. Such a production rate does not constitute a game-changer, but it would give North Korea more plutonium to test in order to refine its nuclear devices to fit on its missiles,” Hecker said.

He said the reactor restart also gives the government of Kim Jong Un more to bargain with but complicates future talks, as negotiators would have to deal with what to do with 8,000 spent fuel rods.

Diplomatic overtures by North Korean officials in informal talks with U.S. experts in recent weeks have prompted calls by some for a fresh effort at formal engagement with the North.

But there’s little enthusiasm for that in Washington, as previous disarmament agreements have collapsed amid acrimony. The Obama administration has focused its recent diplomatic efforts on urging China, which wants negotiations to restart, to increase pressure on North Korea and share the U.S. position.

In a paper published Thursday, Evans Revere, a former State Department official, called for a tougher U.S. policy that would leave the door open to credible negotiations.