Left Behind: A Plutonium Debacle
by Sherrie Gossett[Sidebar article accompanying Blinkmanship: Path to a Nuclear Showdown]
Under the “fuel canning” agreement, American nuclear experts assisted North Korea in canning spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor and transferring them from cooling ponds to “dry storage.” The rods were placed in steel containers suitable for shipment out of the country. The U.S. taxpayer-financed process began April 27, 1996 and was finished in April 2000, almost three years after the projected finish date.
Under a subsidiary 1995 agreement, the containers were supposed to be taken out of the country to prevent the fuel from being reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium suitable for creating nuclear bombs. (Supply Agreement KEDO-DRPK 1995, Annex 3, Point 9). So why, after billions were spent on diplomatic “rewards,” were the canisters left behind?
The agreement stated removal of the fuel rods from the country was to begin only after nuclear components for the first light-water reactor began to arrive. Removal was to be completed when the first of two light-water reactor plants was completed. North Korea also had to come into full compliance with IAEA safeguards and demands.
Reactor construction was delayed in 1998 after Pyongyang test-fired a long-range missile capable of hitting the continental United States.
Then on December 31, 2002, North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors from the country and dismantled monitoring equipment. After North Korea failed to meet several conditions for completion of the reactors, the project came to a halt and the containers remained behind.
The CIA soon estimated that Pyongyang had not accounted for one or two nuclear weapons worth of plutonium. In 2003, the CIA reported to Congress that Pyongyang claimed to have reprocessed all 8,000 fuel rods, and expected to have enough plutonium to create more nuclear bombs in the future.
That same year the North offered to refrain from exporting nuclear weapons in exchange for new rewards.
Are all of these canisters or all reprocessed plutonium derived from them still in North Korea? “Your guess is as good as mine,” a CIA spokeswoman told TNI.