3-step nuclear inspections

The International Atomic Energy Agency notified North Korea in May of its plan to inspect the country's nuclear facilities in three stages, a South Korean government official said Sunday.

This is the first detailed inspection plan devised since North Korea and the United States agreed in Geneva in 1994 that the North would freeze its nuclear facilities.

According to the South Korean official, the Vienna-based United Nations agency has divided North Korea's nuclear facilities into those where operations can continue, those that need to be frozen and "others." Inspections will take place in that order, the official said.

Among the facilities where operations can continue is the IRT-2000 reactor and its critical and sub-critical facilities that North Korea imported from the former Soviet Union. The facilities that need to be frozen are the 5-megawatt reactor, nuclear fuel rods, the 50-megawatt and 200-megawatt reactors that are under construction and reprocessing facilities. A nuclear waste disposal facility and a uranium mine were put in the "others" category.

The South Korean official said the international agency will focus its inspections on the 8,000 used fuel rods from the 5-megawatt reactor and reprocessing facilities that could show whether North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. The official added that the nuclear regulatory agency "is negotiating with North Korean authorities over the inspection of the two critical facilities."

The agency and the United States have the position that North Korea should allow inspections of its facilities prior to receiving key components to the light-water reactor in accordance with the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework.

Given current progress of construction, the key components to the light-water reactor that South Korea, the United States and member countries of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization are providing to North Korea are due mid-2004. The agency maintains, however, that inspections should start next year since they take three to four years to complete.

Experts say the atomic agency's plan is a sweeping one in that it will also inspect facilities that North Korea is not required to close. The agency maintains that six inspections thus far have revealed that North Korea extracted at least a few kilograms of plutonium on three occasions.

by Oh Young-hwan