Kumho: North Korea's nuclear ghost
town By Todd
Crowell
Near the village of Kumho on North
Korea's northeastern coast, the partially
completed shell of the reactor containment
building for light-water reactor Unit 1 rises from
the countryside. Site preparations for Unit 2 are
complete, but concrete has not yet been poured.
Work at Kumho was suspended in 2003 and
the site is now a lonely place. Where more than
1,500 construction workers once labored, now only
a few more than 100 people live in the
construction village. Many of the living and
community quarters are empty. A skeleton crew
takes care of preserving the
equipment and
documentation until . . .
Until
when? The twin reactors belong to the
Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization -
known as KEDO. The international consortium was
created in 1995 to fulfil the promises made to
North Korea in the 1994 Agreed Framework.
In that deal, Pyongyang agreed to shut
down its one operating reactor, stop construction
on two others and leave the nuclear fuel untouched
rather than extracting plutonium from the spent
fuel rods. In return, the US promised to provide
500,000 tons annually of heavy fuel oil to burn in
power plants and arrange to build two modern
light-water nuclear power plants.
As
everyone knows, that deal unraveled in 2002 after
Washington accused North Korea of being engaged in
a clandestine program to enrich uranium for
nuclear weapons. Washington said, and the media
reported as fact, that Pyongyang's delegates had
confirmed the enrichment story. Pyongyang says its
negotiator's remarks were misconstrued.
Nevertheless, Washington stopped shipment
of heavy oil in December of that year and work on
the two reactors, then about 35% completed, was
also suspended. North Korea has restarted its
reactor at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang,
removed the spent fuel for reprocessing and
expelled international inspectors. In February it
announced that it was a nuclear weapons state.
The reactors at Kumho were slow to get
going. From the beginning, the US Congress balked
at having anything to do with the project and
never appropriated funds to help build them (they
did pay for the oil). That left South Korea and
Japan to foot the bill, and it took five years
before funding arrangements were finalized and
eight years before the first concrete was poured
in 2002 (ironically only two months before the
agreement unraveled).
Pyongyang didn't
help its cause with such provocations as beaching
a midget submarine on South Korea's northeastern
coast in 1996. That caused Seoul to suspend energy
aid for a while. In 1998 it test-fired a
three-stage ballistic missile over Japan, which,
not surprisingly, annoyed Tokyo. But by 1999 most
of these difficulties had been resolved, and work
proceeded.
South Korea and Japan have sunk
about $1.5 billion into the project. The main
components of the nuclear steam-supply system,
including the reactor cores as well as cooling
pumps and control rooms panels, have been
purchased. They are being maintained under
"mothballs" at the manufacturing sites. This means
they are swathed in plastic sheeting and smothered
with nitrogen to prevent corrosion.
So,
what next for KEDO? KEDO itself continues
to go through the motions. Officials still hold
meetings with their North Korean counterparts to
iron out problems. Indeed, KEDO is one of the few
forums where Americans maintain something like
normal social and commercial intercourse with
North Koreans. The consortium is set to expire on
December 1 unless the board agrees to extend its
life for another year, as it did last year.
Conspicuously missing on the KEDO board
are the Chinese. The consortium, initially made up
of the US, Japan and South Korea, has added such
participants as Chile and Uzbekistan. It should
invite the Chinese and Russians, both participants
in the six-party talks, to join. When the Agreed
Framework was negotiated in 1994, China was almost
incidental to the issue; now it is pivotal.
During the recent six-party negotiations
in Beijing, Washington balked at Pyongyang's
demands that it be allowed to operate civilian
nuclear power plants. At China's urging the US
reluctantly agreed to consider the matter at a
later date. Later Pyongyang said it needed a
reactor before it could move on dismantling its
nuclear program, seeming to throw the agreement
into jeopardy.
North Korea could be
trusted with modern light-water reactors because
they require slightly enriched uranium to run
(North Korea's old-fashioned graphite-moderated
units run on naturally occurring uranium). Since
the North supposedly had no enrichment capability
it would have had to rent the fuel from abroad and
return it after it was used. That way no plutonium
could be recovered for bombs.
But if North
Korea can enrich uranium, as the US suspects, and
therefore can make its own light-water reactor
fuel even to the very low enrichment levels
required for normal reactor operations, this
safeguard is removed (not to mention possibly
turning the fuel into highly enriched uranium
suitable for atomic bombs). But does North Korea
have an enrichment program?
Washington
will be reluctant to agree to resumption of the
work at Kumho until it is satisfied that the North
does not have this capability. This will be
difficult. North Korea's reactors and other
nuclear facilities are well known. Intelligence
satellites regularly monitor them. But nobody can
say within 500 miles where even a suspected
enrichment site might be located.
It may
be difficult for Washington to concede that such a
program does not exist. It would mean admitting
that it exaggerated North Korea's interest in
enriching uranium, much as it exaggerated the
existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
After all, North Korea's supposed secret program
to enrich uranium was the reason - or, if you
prefer, the pretext - for breaking the 1994
accords.
Veteran Asia correspondent
Todd Crowell comments on Asian affairs.
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