Yongbyon 5 Megawatt Nuclear Reactor “Dilapidated”
by Richardson ~ March 30th, 2007. Filed under: Nuclear Proliferation, Six-Party Talks, WMD.According to Richard Halloran, the shutting down of Yongbyon may be a bit of a wooden nickel:
The nuclear power plant that North Korea has agreed to shut down in return for oil and other concessions is in such poor operating condition that Pyongyang may not be unhappy to give it up, according to informants who have been in North Korea or who have access to intelligence reports.
The informants said the plant’s thick walls are crumbling, its machinery is rusting, and maintenance of the electric power plant, roads, and warehouses that sustain the nuclear facility has been neglected. North Korea’s impoverished economy, they surmised, just cannot support the operation.
Moreover, the North Korean plant’s technology is 50 years old and obsolete. It was acquired, possibly by Russian spies, by the Soviet Union from the British in the 1950s, then passed to North Korea in the 1980s.
[. . .]
Mr. Pritchard said a separate 50-megawatt reactor under construction nearby “looked dilapidated, and I have my non-technical doubts about the North Koreans’ ability to restart construction.”
More on the facility via GlobalSecurity:
The DPRK began constructing of a 5 megawatt (electrical) reactor in 1980, and US analysts reportedly believe that site preparation began in 1979.
[. . .]
Although this reactor is frequently termed a “5-MW(e)” research reactor, in fact it is thought to be capable of a thermal power output of between 20 and 30 megawatts. This is up to twice the thermal output that would normally be associated with a 5 megawatt electrical output [the electrical output is nominally one-third the thermal output].
The Yongbyon reactor is a gas-graphite reactor of some 25 MW thermal output which went into operation in 1986. [more]
Also from GlobalSecurity, imagery and maps of the Yongbyon reactor site, and information on reactor types from DPRK Studies.
From Wikipedia, the full name of the center at Yongbyon is the, “Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center,” in Korean 녕변핵시설 (Nyŏngbyŏn haekshisŏl).
May 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am
[...] reactors this agreement has not touched — a nearly complete 50-MW reactor right next to the worn-out, used-up 5-MW model that has been partially dismantled, and a half-finished 200-MW reactor (satellite images here). [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
[...] proliferation expert Henry Sokolski has his doubts). But the key fact is that this small reactor had probably reached the end of its useful life anyway. But the channel added, “Even now, piecing the facility back together is seen as a [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
[...] and now claims to be restarting — one 5-MW reactor (pics here and here) that was probably crumbling and used up anyway, but did not disable a 50-MW reactor just across the river (pics here and here) that was reported [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
[...] to mind is that North Korea blew up a cooling tower in the Yongbyon facility that was reportedly so old and decrepit that the facility can no longer be used to safely process plutonium anyway. Rice has done [...]
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 am
[...] condition of its 5-MW reaction. Not only do I agree that the reactor is probably a wreck, I believe that was also true before the North Koreans sold us their scrap heap for such a high price. Funny, I don’t [...]