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Yongbyon nuclear facilities
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Experts weigh in on the methods and timeline for halting production
The dismantlement and verification process for North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facilities and the associated costs are drawing attention amid growing predictions that a concrete agreement on the facilities could be reached at the upcoming second North Korea-US summit. “Uranium mines, uranium refinement facilities, nuclear fuel-rod production facilities, atomic reactors, reprocessing facilities, uranium enrichment facilities, and nuclear weapon development facilities would all need to be dismantled, and the dismantlement of the 5MWe graphite-moderated reactor, the radiochemistry laboratory for reprocessing, and the high-level waste storage facilities will be particularly difficult,” said Ahn Jin-su, former senior research engineer at the Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC), during a policy round table discussion on the “dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities and Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR)” on Feb. 21 at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Ahn explained that due to the higher levels of radioactive contamination than in other facilities, the decontamination and dismantlement would entail large processing costs and take correspondingly longer. One potential approach to dismantling the 5MWe reactor – which has been frozen and disabled in the past – would be to suspend operations before proceeding into permanent disablement measures. Other new permanent reactor disablement approaches that are being discussed include pouring concrete over the entire facility or on the control rods only and placing boron carbide powder in the core to prevent nuclear fission reactions, effectively paralyzing the reactor. Each of these processes could be achieved in a matter of months, according to Ahn. Cost for Yongbyon shutdown much higher than intl. standards predict Noting estimates placing the costs of dismantling a 5MWe reactor between US$12.5 million and US$23.5 million by international standards, Ahn predicted the cost for the Yongbyon reactor would be much higher because of the core’s abnormally large size relative to power generating capacity. Additional costs would be incurred to dismantle reprocessing facilities; Ahn noted the cost of US$1.6 billion to dismantle research reprocessing facilities at Karlsruhe in Germany, which were similar in scale to the Yongbyon reprocessing facilities. The dismantlement process in that case took 22 years. The uranium enrichment facilities at Yongbyon – access to which has been denied to the international community since they were shown to Siegfried Hecker, nuclear physicist and senior research fellow at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, and others in November 2010 – would reportedly be easier to handle than the 5MWe reactor. Because the radioactivity levels are not particularly intense, possible approaches include cutting the centrifuge or transporting it overseas. Verification is being stressed as an essential part of the Yongbyon facilities’ dismantlement. “The only way for us to know the production volumes of nuclear material and nuclear warheads is if we first ascertain the uranium mining volumes and learn in detail about the refinement, the yields of uranium oxide and uranium tetrafluoride and hexafluoride, and the history of the reactor’s operation,” said Whang Joo-ho, professor of nuclear engineering at Kyung Hee University. “The Yongbyon facilities represent a very important part,” he added. The amount of plutonium extracted can be known with relative accuracy by measuring isotope ratios in reprocessing waste, but verification of uranium enrichment facilities would be comparatively difficult, experts explained. By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
