Seoul, July 15: North Korea's Yongbyon reactor was
ostensibly built to generate electricity but is reportedly not
connected to any power lines.
Instead, experts say, it has produced enough plutonium
from its fuel rods for possibly up to a dozen nuclear weapons
over its 20-year history.
The US State Department said yesterday it had been
told that the reactor and other facilities at Yongbyon had
been shut down, as part of a six-nation nuclear disarmament
deal agreed in February.
UN nuclear inspectors and a first shipment of fuel
oil, promised in return for the shutdown, arrived in the
communist state earlier in the day.
The reactor, 96 kilometres north of Pyongyang, has a
capacity of five megawatts and began operating in 1987. Two
larger reactors are at the same site but are not yet thought
to be operational, along with a functioning plutonium
reprocessing plant several stories high.
About 2,000 to 3,000 people work at the complex.
The five-megawatt reactor is too small to make much
difference to the nation's acute power shortage and a US
Congressional Research Service (CRS) report in January said
it reportedly had no power lines attached to it.
Nevertheless, the North demanded steep compensation
for lost energy when it shut down Yongbyon under a 1994
"agreed framework" deal with the United States.
An international consortium started work on two
proliferation-resistant light water reactors and the US
provided an interim 500,000 tonnes a year of heavy fuel oil.
The deal collapsed in 2002, when Washington accused
the North of running a covert highly enriched uranium
programme, and fuel shipments were suspended.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, July 15, 2007, 00:00