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U.S. expert saw hundreds of centrifuges in North Korea
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U.S. expert saw hundreds of centrifuges in North Korea
Reuters - 2 hours 33 minutes ago
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By Arshad Mohammed and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON - A U.S. nuclear scientist saw hundreds of centrifuges in North Korea this month, sources familiar with the matter said on Saturday, buttressing the case that Pyongyang has a uranium enrichment program giving it a second way to obtain fissile material for atomic bombs.
Washington has believed since 2002 that Pyongyang had such a program but the apparent sophistication of its effort could ignite fresh debate over how to deal with North Korea's unpredictable leadership and whether to resume talks aimed at ending its nuclear ambitions.
North Korean officials took the expert, Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University, to a plant at its Yongbyon nuclear complex where he saw hundreds and hundreds of centrifuges, the sources told Reuters.
The officials said they had 2,000 centrifuges in operation but the U.S. team that visited the country was unable to verify that, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"But it certainly looked like an operating facility ," one source said.
Another source said Hecker was "stunned" by how modern and sophisticated the uranium enrichment facility appeared to be.
Hecker was unable to spend enough time there to establish whether the plant was designed to produce only low-enriched uranium needed to make fuel for a power plant or the highly enriched uranium needed for bombs, he said.
The source said Hecker was told the facility was producing 3.5 percent enriched uranium, the level needed for a power plant. To produce bomb-grade fissile material, uranium must be enriched to more than 90 percent.
It was not immediately clear why North Korea showed Hecker the centrifuges, which one source described as being of the P-2 type used in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
Separately, the U.S. State Department said Stephen Bosworth, an envoy responsible for policy towards North Korea, left on Saturday on a trip to South Korea, Japan and China for consultations on North Korean issues.
"IT UPS THE ANTE"
North Korea, which conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, is believed to have enough fissile material from its separate, plutonium-based nuclear program to make between six and 12 atomic bombs.
Even though it has exploded nuclear devices, Pyongyang has not shown it has a working nuclear bomb.
Still, its nuclear program is seen as a direct threat to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as well as a proliferation risk given North Korea's long history of selling missile technology abroad.
North Korea has said it wants to return to stalled aid-for-disarmament talks but Seoul and Washington have dismissed its pledges to denuclearize as insincere. The United States had demanded tangible but unspecified steps to show Pyongyang's seriousness about abandoning its nuclear programs.
A third person familiar with the matter said a confirmation of a uranium enrichment facility would likely make any deal with North Korea more expensive should the talks resume.
"It ups the ante on whatever deal would be struck to try to get them to abandon their nuclear program because now you are bargaining for two fissile material pathways, not one," said this source.
"The light water reactor, the uranium enrichment, pathway has greater commercial viability than the other. If you can enrich uranium for the you can sell that fuel on the market ... So it ups the price they are going to demand if they ever abandon or forgo their nuclear program."
A senior Obama administration official said the United States has long suspected North Korea of having a uranium enrichment program but would not say whether what Hecker saw during his visit confirmed its existence.
"North Korea's claim to have a uranium enrichment program is yet another provocative act of defiance and, if true, contradicts its own pledges and commitments," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said Bosworth's team -- which arrives in Seoul on Sunday, travels to Tokyo on Monday and Beijing on Tuesday -- would "begin to coordinate on a response to this news."
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