Posted on 09/28/2004 4:20:37 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Minister: N. Korea Has Nuclear Deterrent
1 hour, 49 minutes ago World - AP Asia
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS - North Korea (news - web sites) says it has turned the plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent against increasing U.S. nuclear threats and to prevent a nuclear war in northeast Asia.
Warning that the danger of war on the Korean peninsula "is snowballing," Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon provided details Monday of the nuclear deterrent that he said North Korea has developed for self-defense.
He told the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting that Pyongyang had "no other option but to possess a nuclear deterrent" because of U.S. policies that he claimed were designed to "eliminate" North Korea and make it "a target of preemptive nuclear strikes."
"Our deterrent is, in all its intents and purposes, the self-defensive means to cope with the ever increasing U.S. nuclear threats and further, prevent a nuclear war in northeast Asia," he told a news conference after his speech.
In Washington, a State Department official noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) has said repeatedly that the United States has no plans to attack the communist country.
But in his General Assembly speech and at the press conference with a small group of reporters, Choe blamed the United States for intensifying threats to attack the communist nation and destroying the basis for negotiations to resolve the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Nonetheless, he said, North Korea is still ready to dismantle its nuclear program if Washington abandons its "hostile policy" and is prepared to coexist peacefully.
At the moment, however, he said "the ever intensifying U.S. hostile policy and the clandestine nuclear-related experiments recently revealed in South Korea (news - web sites) are constituting big stumbling blocks" and make it impossible for North Korea to participate in the continuation of six-nation talks on its nuclear program.
North Korea said earlier this year that it had reprocessed the 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and was increasing its "nuclear deterrent" but did not provide any details.
Choe was asked at the news conference what was included in the nuclear deterrent.
"We have already made clear that we have already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms," he said, without elaborating on the kinds or numbers.
When asked if the fuel had been turned into actual weapons, not just weapons-grade material, Choe said, "We declared that we weaponized this."
South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck said in late April that it was estimated that eight nuclear bombs could be made if all 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods were reprocessed. Before the reprocessing, South Korea said it believed the North had enough nuclear material to build one or two nuclear bombs.
The State Department official said he hadn't seen Choe's comments but noted that the Bush administration has long believed that North Korea has at least one or two nuclear weapons. The official, asking not to be identified, said the North Koreans also have made a number of conflicting statements about how far along their weapons development programs have come.
The crisis erupted in 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of running a secret nuclear weapons program. The United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia since have held three rounds of talks on curbing the North's nuclear ambitions, but have produced no breakthroughs.
"If the six-party talks are to be resumed, the basis for the talks demolished by the United States should be properly set up and the truth of the secret nuclear experiments in South Korea clarified completely," Choe told the General Assembly.
South Korea disclosed recently that its scientists conducted a plutonium-based nuclear experiment more than 20 years ago and a uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000. It denied having any weapons ambitions, and an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency is under way.
Choe told the press conference that North Korea wants an explanation because Pyongyang believes it is impossible that such experiments took place "without U.S. technology and U.S. approval."
He also accused President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s administration of being "dead set against" reconciliation between North and South Korea, and of adopting an "extremely undisguised ... hostile policy" toward the country after it came to power in early 2001.
"As it becomes clear that the U.S. has been pursuing the aim to stifle the DPRK by military means, so our determination to build up a powerful deterrent becomes resolute more and more," Choe said, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
At the third round of six-party talks in June, the United States proposed that the North disclose all its nuclear activities, help to dismantle facilities and allow outside monitoring. Under the plan, some benefits would be withheld to ensure the North cooperates.
But North Korea said it would never scrap its nuclear programs first and wait to get rewarded later. Instead, it insisted on "reward for freeze."
Choe said a freeze would be "the first step toward eventual dismantlement of our nuclear program" — and that Pyongyang had intended "to include in the freeze no more manufacturing of nuclear weapons, and no test and transfer of them."
A freeze would be followed by "objective verification," he said.
They may be doing it out of habit, not expecting much, while they are working on something else which has more meat in it.
Ping!
Crazy North Korean Dictator Ping.
Sounds to me like North Korea is a responsible country that truly cares for its people and that this nuclear program is extracurricular.
I would suggest since they are so self sufficient that they feed themselves. No need for the US to send them food or medicine anymore.
"The same old negotiating tactic to weaken American position. Except that they are now doing it at UN. Do they really think that, if they announce that they have nukes, others will submit to their wish, giving them a lot of goodies for not blustering.
They may be doing it out of habit, not expecting much, while they are working on something else which has more meat in it."
Remember bjclinton said all they wanted was "respect". Nuclear gives them "respect".
There are many at the UN who would be happy for N.Korea to stick their finger in our eye, along with JFKerry, who plans to met with the mental Il just as soon as he is elected.
Thank goodness he ain't POTUS.
Anyone here in FR suggesting containment just because North Korea already has nuclear weapons is a week-kneed conservative. NK already said that it has 2 or 3 nukes. Do you want to wait till they have 20 or 30 before they attack and incur much more damage than if we attack right now. Therefore I recommend that we destroy that hellhole immediately after Dubya's reelection. Forget Iran. Israel will take care of that. Besides, internal revolt will work more for that country.
We could hit them so fast they would not have the time or ability to respond. However, they know we won't use our nukes in a first strike without a very good reason.
Still picking up the odd movement in the Northwest DPRK that may signify a Taepodong or Nodong test later this week or in October. Despite DPRK denials. They are playing their cards right into the Kerry camp. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody like Richardson or Pritchard met the bastards in NYC or elsewhere and they figured out a way to volatilize the situation right before the election, so that Kerry could further point up how "unsafe we are" and they HE would settle DPRK issues once and for all, better than Bush. Hmmmmm...
North Korea already has 8 to 10 nuclear weapons as per the last installment of unclassified intelligence released. Those numbers could be out of date by now. The real thing we need to watch for is the development of the Tae-po Dong III. That's a nuclear-capable missile currently being developed by North Korea which has a range sufficient to hit any point in the US. Personally, I think that North Korea will have full attack capabilities within 5 years. That means Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and every other major US city would be in the nuclear target scope of a madman. If we don't attack North Korea by the end of this year, I don't know that containment is possible. If we don't do something very soon, we may have to pull out altogether and pray the missile shield works. We're betting a few million American lives on that, at the very least.
The seismic reports put the event at around 3 on the ritcher scale. Standard energy conversion formulas would estimate that at the explosion of 100 to 1000 tons of TNT. (The uncertainty is primarily about how much of the whole explosion appears as seismic energy). That is smaller than a true nuclear blast, which would typically be recorded as something like 4-4.5 on the ritcher scale. But more than 10 times the scale of the supposed train accident explosion earlier this year.
Now, 2 of them strongly suggests it was not a accident (those typically come alone), and the timing suggests a deliberate test. But the yield is too low to be a successful nuke shot. Since the test, the NKs have been screaming about seas of fire for Japan and things like this article. Their public explanation for the explosions is work on a dam (in the middle of the night, on the nation's anniversary, in a region full of missile bases? Etc.)
To me, the most obvious explanation is they attempted a nuke shot for their anniversary, to announce successful weaponization to the world. But it was a squib. The conventional trigger went off, and started the reaction, but failure to compress the reactants kept it from being a true self chain reaction release. It is difficult to get the reaction to happen because the energy of its early stages tends to drive the reactants apart, and that cuts off further nuclear energy release.
An implosion lense is the conventional explosive device needed to drive the reactants in on each other, evenly enough and at sufficient pressure, that they stay together long enough to set off a full chain reaction before they blow apart.
A squib happens when the implosion shock front is uneven. Pressure "leaks" through the weaker portions of the incoming shock front, and then "vents" the reactants through, effectively, the holes it makes in the incoming shock wave. That cuts off the reaction early, and prevents a full yield. The result is a nuclearly boosted conventional explosion (of the implosion lense) but not a full nuclear one.
To get an explosion lense to work is a difficult piece of engineering. The wavefront is non-linear. The implosion needs to be nearly perfect in terms of its spherical symmetry, or you get venting. Different types of explosives with slightly different detonation rates have to be machined into specific shapes and assembled, to result in a spherically symmetric inward shock wave of sufficient strength.
An implosion lense is essential for plutonium type bombs, and also for minaturization. Uranium bombs can be of the gun type - shoot half the fissile material into the other half - but require ten times as much total mass of fissile material (plutonium has a much higher decay rate so a little goes a longer way). North Korea got plutonium from its reactor fuel, not uranium 235.
Gun type uranium bombs weigh about 10,000 lbs and would not be deliverable from the top of a Scud or Scud derivative. NK missiles can only handle a payload of about 1000 lbs, and for their long range ones more like 500 lbs. Unless they can minituarize their nukes, they can't really deliver them to distant targets. That needs plutonium which they have, but it also needs a implosion lense.
Technically, the design of the implosion lense was the hardest part of the Manhattan project, harder than refining the fuel. John von Neumann solved it. Everybody since has mostly just stolen the result (the Brits were given it under Manhattan project cooperation agreements). But you have to copy pretty precisely for it to work. The NKs could easily mess it up.
That's a very interesting and well-thought out analysis. Well, I don't think the Chinese will give them the help they need with that, if that's in fact the problem. I tend to agree with your assessment that their "events" were likely part of a planned nuclear test. However, I would just point out that there was speculation as far back as the early 1990s that North Korea could have a nuclear weapon or two. It's entirely possible that the device tested could have been from a design as much as ten or twelve years old. Having as many bombs as they have, testing the original ones would certainly make sense, as it would allow them to refine their theories and work towards better future designs. The oldest bombs are the least likely to work, so this unfortunately doesn't tell us much about the new devices recently constructed.
Thank you Jason, for your report and for your knowledge.
A ping for the rest of you........
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