US Warned Of 'Imminent' Nuclear Peril

[Andy_Stephenson]

By Shane Green in Tokyo
Louise Dodson in Canberra
The Age.com - Australia

7-15-3

Former United States Defence Secretary William Perry has warned that the US and North Korea are drifting towards war, with an "imminent danger" of nuclear explosions in American cities.

His chilling assessment of the communist state's nuclear program came as an increasingly worried China intervened, revealing a push for talks and sending a special envoy to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Mr Perry, in an interview with the Washington Post, warned that time was running out in the nuclear crisis. "I think we are losing control of the situation," said the Clinton-era defence chief.

He warned that North Korea could soon begin exporting nuclear weapons to terrorists and other adversaries of the US, posing "an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities".

Referring to reports that North Korea had begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium, Mr Perry said: "I have thought for some months that if the North Koreans moved toward processing, then we are on a path toward war."


http://www.rense.com/general39/wuwj.htm

[Walt Starr]

1. Do you have a reliable source for this?

Rense has been ever unreliable.

[Stephanie]

2. It's all over the news

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56019-2003Jul14.html

[Q]

3. This is BS...

...why would a country produce nukes for someone else?

- We've heard this lying rhetoric before: accuse a country (on the evil list) of plotting against the US...invade them and never show the evidence for the urgent need to attack.

-

[Stephanie]

5. Maybe, but Perry is criticizing BushCo on this

"From his discussions, Perry has concluded the president simply won't enter into genuine talks with Pyongyang's Stalinist government. "My theory is the reason we don't have a policy on this, and we aren't negotiating, is the president himself," Perry said. "I think he has come to the conclusion that Kim Jong Il is evil and loathsome and it is immoral to negotiate with him."

The immediate cause of concern, Perry said, is that North Korea appears to have begun reprocessing the spent fuel rods. "I have thought for some months that if the North Koreans moved toward processing, then we are on a path toward war," he said.

Perry's comments, while unusually blunt from a former senior policymaker, reflect an increasing consensus among other specialists that the administration, distracted by Iraq, has allowed the North Korean crisis to spiral out of control."

[renegade000]

4. seeing as i live in dc...

goodbye everyone! :-(

[punpirate]

6. I recall reading an account by one of the US investigators...

... who visited NK's reactor at Yongbyon in 1994, as part of the team negotiating the shutdown of the reactor in exchange for two reactors incapable of producing significant amounts of plutonium. His remarks were quite interesting. He found recent radioactive spills, that the reactor was based upon a very old British design (gas-cooled graphite), and there was strong evidence that the reactor was not working well. His estimate was, if I recall, that about three-quarters of the fuel rods were ruptured. This would explain the number of fuel rods available for processing, since ruptured rods produce a sudden spike in reactor heat which requires shutdown. He even said that the Korean guard on site with a radiation counter did not even realize that the instrument was broken (an indication of the sophistication of the operation).

From that description, it would seem that there were problems with the design, the control system or the manufacture of the fuel rods.

From other accounts, the reactor is quite small--about 5-6 megawatts electrical (30 megawatts thermal). The core would likely be composed of relatively few fuel rods at that power output.

The reactor began operation in 1987. For full power operation for one year, it would have to consume ~ 90 metric tons of uranium oxide fuel, probably about 7000 fuel rods.

The US has been asserting that the reactor was under full power from the time it started until 1994, when the deal was made for new reactors, but that contradicts the eyewitness descriptions of the fuel rods. At that rate, they should have now approximately 50,000 fuel rods available. If they say they have 8000, then interruptions in operation have been likely. Moreover, there's no guarantee of maximum efficiency in plutonium production if the reactor were shut down frequently, since plutonium production is time-dependent. Other estimates are that this type of reactor, running at maximum capacity would produce about 10kg per year of fissile plutonium. If it were shut down frequently for replacement of ruptured rods, that amount would likely be less. It's likely that, with 8000 rods available, and many of them damaged, the North Koreans have perhaps enough plutonium for one 10KT bomb and a little left over, or perhaps two smaller yield devices, with some sophisticated weapon design.

Hundreds? Very doubtful.

Cheers.