Scientist: NKorea has built new nuclear facility

AP ^ | 11/12/10 | FOSTER KLUG

[gandalftb]

BTW, very unlikely NK will build a bomb. They need cash and most likely they will sell the weapons grade uranium to Myanmar, Venezuela, Iran, Syria.

Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies.....

[SevenofNine]

Sound like to me Obama is Nero he eat ice cream while America and rest of the Asia feel threat from Chia Chub and Chia Pet

[mylife]

Chia Chub! LoL!!!

[silverleaf]

NK = perfect contract nuke producers for the axis of evil

Crazy dictator and hard to attack, since there are thousands of Americans and millions of Korean civilians within rocket and artillery range

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks gandalftb.

[TigerLikesRooster]

N. Korea nuclear program is first and foremost for nuclear bombs for N. Korea. N. Korea has not gone at so much length to be the country of uranium outsourcing just to make money.

Uranium bomb is much easier to build according to what I heard. It boosts their political and military leverage to have large pop(bigger than Hiroshima size) and show outsiders that they do have goods, putting an end to whispering in some corners that N. Korea is faking nuclear tests.

[gandalftb]

They have enough enriched plutonium for about 12 bombs. Comparing plutonium to uranium there are trade-offs. Plutonium is easier fuel to make, much harder to light off, but much easier to get really big yields with a small payload, more portable.

NK doesn't have the beginning of the technology to actually make a uranium bomb and has shown little effort to do so, as compared to the effort they are making to get the enriching going.

NK has had it with Plutonium, both an an energy produce and as a weapon, witness the last two pathetic tests. They legitimately and badly need nuke fuel for energy and are building a light water power plant that uses uranium for fuel.

The big problem for NK is where to buy the uranium ore, China has very little and won't give it up. That leaves Niger and Namibia, maybe Kazakhstan.

There is a working theory that this centrifuge facility is a "Potempkin". A decoy, that they are not really enriching beyond experimental uses. That the real goal is to work the bugs out of Iran and other's chronic breakdown problems with their P-1 and P-2 centrifuges. Then sell the P-1 and P-2 centrifuges and rent out the engineers to set it up. That theory is driven by the mystery of where NK would ever get the low grade uranium to start with. Also, NK needs cash, bad. What else do they have to offer Syria and Venezuela and Myanmar?

[TigerLikesRooster]

The big problem for NK is where to buy the uranium ore

N. Korea has domestic uranium mine(s.) IIRC, somewhere in Pyongsan. I heard there are more than one, although Pyongsan is the biggest.

It is really premature to dismiss those centrifuges as elaborate decoys. Why people always err on the wrong side? Besides, how do we safely assume that N. Korea had not developed technology to produce uranium bomb? Until they set it off?

As for China, since when are they so dead-set against dealings between Iran and N. Korea? At one point, it is widely assumed that China won't stand for N. Korea doing a nuclear test. It was assumed to be red line, and N. Korea had to eventually give up its nukes. Look at how it turned out. China sat still and left N. Korea alone. From time to time, it plays game with grain and fuel supplies to N. Korea, but that is about it. Even if N. Korea is fully nuclear capable, China will still see it as an acceptable price to keep N. Korea under their orbit, short of N. Korea pointing its IRBM toward Beijing.

N. Korea, as it stands, is an economically broken country and is not supposed to have enough money to bankroll their rocket program. However, they insist on having it, and they do so far. There are certain things this N. Korean regime won't give up ever: Its hold on power and nuke/rocket technology. As long as the regime is alive, you can count on the prospect that they will continue to pursue it, no matter the difficulty of procuring necessary materials. N. Korea will have an uranium bomb, unless it collapses in next two years. Whatever technical difficulty they have, they can overcome it given reasonable amount of time, given that uranium design has less kinks to overcome than plutonium design, although uranium bomb is said to be too big to be mounted on a missile. That's OK. Get a working bomb first, whether it is uranium or plutonium design. That will give political leverage not available to them up to now. Then they can work for more challenging ones.

There are people who believe that there are only two options: either they capitulate to N. Korea or dismiss everything N. Korea says. I don't know why it is so, but they seem to be a majority among policy-making circle.

So Condi and Hill made all those stupid initiatives because they "knew" that everything about NK nuke program is a dud?

[gandalftb]

Good points, we have made some pretty sorry bluffs and NK doesn't blink.

They have some ore:

Sunchon-Wolbingson mine

Kusong mine, N Pyongan Province

Pyongsan mine, N Hwanghae Province

Sunchon mine, S Pyongan

Unggi mine

Yongchun deposit

Songhak-ri, Hoiryeong

However, NK has offered Russia exclusive rights to its uranium ore in exchange for open support at the six-way talks to ease economic sanctions on NK. The plan is for Russia to import the uranium and enrich it before selling it on as nuclear fuel to China and Vietnam, for great profit.

Rumor has it the centrifuges in NK will only be used to get the impurities out and reduce the volume and send it on to Russia.

The background theme always seems to be NK trying to make a buck.

[silverleaf]

Alex, I go with the answer:

“North Korea - for oil, hard currency or commodities - is contracting out its territory and workers to externally-directed research, development, testing and production of WMD (and training ground for foreign WMD researchers) for export”

How many nukes do they need to incinerate South Korea? 12? LOL!