tailieunhanh - Taking Stock: North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment Program

Interpreting these elliptic announcements is challenging, but most believe that North Korea is unlikely to be bluffing about pursuing uranium enrichment. Moreover, few believe that if North Korea does build an enrichment plant, the enriched uranium will be strictly for peaceful nuclear uses. More likely, the plant will produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Fueling this assessment, North Korea has not demonstrated any capability to build a light water reactor, which requires a range of technological capabilities that are lacking in the country. However, it is unclear whether North Korea can successfully build and. | The Institute for Science and International Security October 8 2010 Taking Stock North Korea s Uranium Enrichment Program David Albright and Paul Brannan October 8 2010 The Institute for Science and International Security October 8 2010 Executive Summary North Korea s centrifuge program poses both a horizontal and a vertical proliferation threat. It is an avenue for North Korea to increase the number and sophistication of its nuclear weapons and for it to proliferate to others who seek to build their own centrifuge programs. As a result the priority is finding ways to either stop the program or to delay its progress through a combination of negotiations and sanctions. Procurement data obtained by governments and information from Pakistan establish that North Korea is developing centrifuges. However determining the centrifuge program s status and the locations of its centrifuge facilities is difficult. Known procurements for North Korea s centrifuge program do not show whether North Korea is able to produce significant amounts of highly enriched uranium. Yet the data support that North Korea has moved beyond laboratory-scale work and has the capability to build at the very least a pilot-scale gas centrifuge plant. However the procurement data do not contain consistent numbers of procured items that would indicate the construction of a 3 000 centrifuge plant large enough to produce enough weapongrade uranium for about two nuclear weapons per year. Faced with uncertainties in assessments of North Korea s centrifuge program the . intelligence community focused on the significance of the 2007 and 2008 discoveries of traces of highly enriched uranium HEU found on North Korean aluminum tubes and operating records for the Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The discoveries raised anew concerns that North Korea had a secret gas centrifuge plant operating by the mid-2000s contradicting assessments based on procurement data. The enriched uranium particles remain the most direct .