Defiant North Korea Reveals Covert Uranium Nuclear Facility
Bruce Klingner /
Pyongyang revealed a covert facility for enriching uranium to a visiting U.S. scientist last week. Dr. Siegfried Hecker, former head of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, stated he was shown a vast plant containing “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges—North Korea claimed 2,000—controlled by an “ultra modern control room.”
The discovery affirms a U.N. report released earlier this month that North Korea continues to “use a number of masking techniques in order to circumvent the Security Council measures” to curtail Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. Although the United States has long asserted that North Korea was pursing a uranium-based nuclear weapons program, the direct observation by Dr. Hecker provides direct, tangible evidence of Pyongyang’s ongoing efforts for parallel uranium- and plutonium-based paths to a nuclear arsenal.
North Korea’s revealing of the covert uranium enrichment facility was intended to force Presidents Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to the negotiating table and raise the price of any future agreement. The Obama Administration is now faced with a new North Korean crisis that risks undermining support for its “strategic patience” strategy toward Pyongyang. Ambassador Stephen Bosworth’s abruptly scheduled visit to Asia this weekend will be to discuss a unified allied response to the new discovery, which may have been unknown by U.S. intelligence agencies. (more…)