N. Korea enriching uranium, scientist says

SEOUL, South Korea — In secret and with remarkable speed, North Korea has built a new, highly sophisticated facility to enrich uranium, an American nuclear scientist said, raising fears that the North is ramping up its atomic program despite international pressure.

The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report posted Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to the North’s main Yongbyon atomic complex to a small industrial-scale uranium-enrichment facility. It had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges, he said, and the North told him it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor. He described his first glimpse of the new centrifuges as “stunning.”

Hecker, a former directorof the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North’s secretive nuclear program, acknowledged that it was not clear what North Korea stood to gain by showing him the formerly secret area.

The revelation could be designed to strengthen the North Korean government as it looks to transfer power from leader Kim Jong Ilto a young, unproven son. As Washington and others tighten sanctions, unveiling the centrifuges could also be an attempt by Pyongyang to force a resumption of stalled international nuclear disarmament-for-aid talks.

President Barack Obama’s administration has shunned direct negotiations with the North after Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests lastyear and in the wake of an international finding that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

The U.S. State Department announced that the Obama administration’s special envoy on North Korea planned to visit South Korea, Japan and China, where he will hold talks with his counterparts starting Sunday.

North Korea has shunned the disarmament talks, demanding the United Nations sanctions imposed for its two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 be lifted. Bosworth’s trip is part of an effort to coordinate a response to the reports of the new plant, a senior Obama administration official said on condition of anonymity.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said uranium-enrichment activities would violate U.N. resolutions and agreements by North Korea over its nuclear program.

“From my perspective, it’s North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilizing for the region. It confirms or validates the concern we’ve had for years about their enriching uranium,” Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, said on CNN’s State of the Union.

North Korea told Hecker it began construction on the centrifuges in April 2009 and finished only a few days before the scientist’s Nov. 12 visit.

“Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us,” Hecker, a Stanford University professor, wrote.

Hecker described the control room as “astonishingly modern,” writing that, unlike other North Korean facilities, it “would fit into any modern American processing facility.”

The facilities appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, not for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, Hecker said. He saw no evidence of continued plutonium production at Yongbyon. But, he said, the uranium-enrichment facilities “could be readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he doesn’t believe the facility is part of a peaceful nuclear energy program.

“I don’t credit that at all,” Gates said in Bolivia, where he is attending a regional defense conference.

The facility appears to be a uranium-enrichment facility, Gates said, and it could enable North Korea to build “a number” of nuclear devices beyond the handful it is presumed to have already assembled.

Mullen called North Korea “a very dangerous country.”

“I’ve been worried about North Korea and its potential nuclear capability for a long time,” Mullen said on ABC’s This Week.

“This certainly gives that potential real life, very visible life that we all ought to be very, very focused on.”

Uranium enrichment would give the North a second way to make atomic bombs, in addition to its known plutonium based program. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in nuclear bombs. Hecker’s findings were first reported in The New York Times.

Bosworth’s trip to Asia comes as new satellite images show construction under wayat Yongbyon. That, combined with reports from Hecker and another American expert who recently traveled to the atomic complex, appear to show that Pyongyang is keeping its pledge to build a nuclear power reactor.

North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel. Hecker, and Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea, have said that construction has begun.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies, said the North’s uranium disclosure is meant to force the United States back into nuclear negotiations.

The disclosure, Yang said, also is aimed at a domestic audience during the succession process. “The North wants to muster loyalty among military generals by showing them the North will continue to bolster its nuclear deterrent and uphold its military-first policy,” Yang said.

Light-water reactors are ostensibly for civilian energy purposes, but such a power plant would give the North a reason to enrich uranium. While light-water reactors are considered less prone to misuse than heavy-water reactors, once the process of uranium enrichment is mastered, it is relatively easy to enrich further to weapons-grade levels.

Uranium can be enriched in relatively inconspicuous factories that are better able to evade spy satellite detection, U.S. and South Korean experts said. Uranium-based bombs may also work without requiring test explosions like the two carried out by North Korea in 2006 and 2009 for plutonium based weapons.

North Korea has not yet demonstrated the capability to refine bomb-making skills to the point that the devices could be attached to longrange missiles. That ability would be needed if the North ever intended to launch an attack far beyond its borders.

But North Korea exports $100 million in weapons and missiles each year in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a U.N. expert panel’s report that said Iran and Syria may be among countries that received missiles.

The 75-page report, released Nov. 10, also cited evidence compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, governments and news reports that North Korea is involved in “nuclear and ballistic missile related activities in certain other countries including Iran, Syria and Burma.”

Gates warned that North Korea is developing new longrange missiles, and possibly a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile.

“All of these programs are of great concern to every nation,” Gates said.

Hecker said the North Koreans emphasized that the centrifuge facility was operating; although he couldn’t verify that statement, he said “it was not inconsistent with what we saw.”

“The only hope” for dealing with the North’s nuclear program “appears to be engagement,” he wrote, calling a military attack “out of the question” and more sanctions “likewise a dead end.”

Many questions are still unanswered about North Korea’s nuclear program, Hecker wrote, including whether the North is really pursuing nuclear electricity; whether it’s abandoning plutonium production; how it got such sophisticated centrifuge technology; and why it’s revealing the facilities now.

“One thing is certain,” he said. “These revelations will cause a political firestorm.” Information for this article was contributed by Foster Klug, Hyung-jin Kim, Matthew Lee, Anne Gearan of The Associated Press and by Bomi Lim, Kyunghee Park, Bill Varner, Catherine Dodge and David Lerman of Bloomberg News.