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CIA: North Korea Could Make 50 Nuclear Bombs a Year NewsMax.com WiresWASHINGTON – The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that North Korea could eventually produce enough plutonium to make at least 50 nuclear bombs a year.
On Thursday in Pyonyang, the state-run news service released a statement from the Foreign Ministry saying the 1994 Agreed Framework that places the country's nuclear reactors under international monitoring had collapsed. The article said, "Now that the U.S. unilaterally gave up its last commitment under the framework, the DPRK acknowledges that it is high time to decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of the framework." State Department Deputy spokesman Phil Reeker Thursday told United Press International, "North Korea has clearly violated the agreed framework, and they are the ones who said they considered it nullified." A CIA estimate shared on Capitol Hill this week says two such reactors – a 50-megawatt electronic reactor in Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt electronic reactor in Taechon – would "generate about 275 kg per year, although it would take several years to complete construction of these reactors." Most analysts believe it requires five to six kilograms of plutonium to produce one nuclear bomb. The Clinton administration's 1994 agreement placed the Yongbyon and Taechon reactors under supposed monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for shipments of heavy fuel oil and assistance in constructing a light-water nuclear reactor. U.S. officials say North Korea's Foreign Ministry told Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia James Kelly in October on a trip to Pyongyang that the agreement was null and void. The statements came after confirmations the North Koreans had continued a nuclear program despite pledges not to do so under the agreement. In the past month statements from the North Koreans suggest they might be open to a new understanding based on a proposal for a non-aggression pact with the United States. The CIA says the Yongbyon and Taechon reactors are several years away from being fully operational. Henry Sokolski, the director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which made the unclassified CIA estimate available to the media, a critic of the 1994 agreed framework, said he believed it would be at least six years until the North Koreans would be able to bring these reactors up to working condition. "In six years who knows the country could implode," he said. But the agency's estimate also says the North Koreans could produce nuclear weapons by reprocessing fuel at the Yongbyon reactor in storage. "Reprocessing the spent 5 MWe reactor fuel now in storage at Yongbyon site under IAEA safeguards would recover enough plutonium for several more weapons." The CIA's estimate also says it has recently learned North Korea is "constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational, which could be as soon as mid-decade." Copyright 2002 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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