Agence France-Presse,
SEOUL: North Korea is pledged as early as this week to start disabling a nuclear weapons programme it took half a century to develop, but the key question is how far it is prepared to go.
The hardline communist state hailed its first nuclear test in October 2006, which stunned the rest of the world, as a “miracle.”
How far it will go toward wrecking its plutonium-producing nuclear plants, however, will be a big test of the six-nation February accord aimed at ending its atomic drive for good.
“Disablement”, which first appeared publicly in that disarmament agreement, would cripple the plants' operations until they are dismantled next year under the pact's final phase.
The aim of disablement, due to be completed by the end of the year, is to avoid a repeat of what happened when the last denuclearisation pact fell apart in 2002.
After an eight-year shutdown, the North quickly restarted its plants and resumed production of bomb-making plutonium.
“During the last several months, it appears to have been difficult to convince the DPRK (North Korea) to carry out disablement steps that significantly damage their nuclear facilities,” warned US scientists David Albright and Paul Brannan, of the Institute for Science and International Security.
US experts were due to arrive in North Korea later Thursday to supervise the work. And Washington's nuclear envoy Christopher Hill, speaking in Beijing after last-minute talks with his North Korean counterpart, was upbeat.
“We are very satisfied that we have an overall plan that will be effective and that will provide the disablement that we need,” Hill said.
Albright and Brannan, in a recent report, said current disablement steps at the Yongbyon complex appear aimed at delaying any restart for up to a year. These will cover the five-megawatt reactor, the fuel fabrication plant and the radiochemical laboratory.
But parts of these plants would have to be preserved so that negotiators can verify how much plutonium the North produced in the past.
The 20-year-old Soviet-style reactor is a priority for disablement because it is the North's only source of additional plutonium. Albright and Brannan said the North has an estimated 45-65 kilograms (99-143 pounds) of plutonium including the material inside the reactor's core.
“A critical purpose of the February agreement is to prevent that stock from growing further,” they said.
The most straightforward step, they said, would be to remove all the fuel from the reactor and place it in adjacent irradiated fuel ponds.
This could be done by local technicians in a matter of weeks and, once wet, the fuel could not be reloaded into the reactor without great difficulty.
Another crucial step would be the North's agreement not to maintain the reactor except for environmental, safety and health reasons.
Medium-term disablement could involve destroying mechanisms that allow neutron-absorbing control rods to be pulled from the reactor; destroying mechanisms to cool the reactor; destroying or removing the fuel rod handling machine; dispersing neutron-absorbing material into the fuel and control rod channels; pouring salt water into all control panels; or partially destroying the reactor's concrete shell.
The scientists said the pact on temporary disablement “represents an important step towards… denuclearisation” but much work lies ahead.
Negotiators say the toughest task will be persuading the North to hand over its plutonium stockpile and remaining nuclear weapons. Some analysts believe this will never happen.
Paik Haksoon, of Seoul's Sejong Institute, said in September that “the dismantlement of nuclear weapons … will come at the very last stage, if it happens.
“For North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, the abandoning of nuclear bombs is the last card to play.”
