That’s Weapons Grade Uranium
The debate about North Korea’s uranium cheat should be over with even Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment of it, but Condi Rice’s statement that North Korea possesses some unknown quantity of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium isn’t a fact we should just gloss over. That’s the first time I’ve seen that reported.
Update: The Daily NK has more recent statements from the Administration on this topic, including from President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.
The President stated during the last press conference of his term in office on Monday that, “One of my concerns is that there might be a highly enriched uranium program”¦ they’re still dangerous.
President Bush also stressed the need for establishing a “strong verification regime,” and called for North Korea to honor its past commitments, to release all information pertaining to the development of its nuclear weapons program and allow for verifiable confirmation of disarmament.
Similar calls and warnings over North Korea’s potential HEU program have been heard from numerous top-level officials in recent weeks, Vice-President Dick Cheney stated on the 8th, “it looks like they [North Korea] have a continuing, ongoing program to produce highly enriched uranium,” in an interview with the Associated Press. Additionally, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, while giving a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated on the 7th that, “some in the intelligence community have increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program. [Daily NK]
The Daily NK also quotes this 2005 Congressional Research Service report about North Korea’s likely intentions:
A 2002 unclassified CIA working paper on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment estimated that North Korea “is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational — which could be as soon as mid-decade.22 Such a plant would need to produce more than 50kg of HEU per year, requiring cascades of thousands of centrifuges. The paper noted that in 2001, North Korea “began seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities.
For North Korea, a centrifuge enrichment program offers three advantages: such plants are difficult to locate and target, making them less vulnerable to military strikes than reactors or reprocessing plants. HEU also could give the North Koreans the option of producing either simpler weapons (gun-assembly type) or more sophisticated weapons (using composite pits or boosted fission techniques). Third, an HEU program is a
bargaining chip to use with the United States. However, a centrifuge enrichment plant requires considerable industrial sophistication. [Sharon A. Squassoni, Congressional Research Service, 2005]
There will be no way for us to verify that this threat has ceased to exist unless the North Koreans make the decision to fully disclose it, something this administration, all the way up to President Bush himself, pointedly failed to insist on:
Verification of those claims would require greater access to the material and North Korean cooperation. This is particularly true in the case of uranium enrichment; U.S. intelligence officials have said they do not know where the uranium program is. According to one senior Administration official, the North Koreans have “got to give it up. That’s how the Libyans did it. This would also be true of other verification challenges, like confirming the existence of North Korean warheads and their dismantlement.
Update: And the evidence just seems to grow more overwhelming with each passing day. This isn’t to deny there are always uncertainties about the scale and scope of what the North Koreans are up to. But with all that we know today, it’s no longer possible to make a responsible, intelligent argument for failing to make North Korea’s HEU program at top U.S. priority, or for providing regime-sustaining benefits before that program is brought to a swift and verifiable end.