U.S. expert saw hundreds of centrifuges in North KoreaWASHINGTON (Reuters) – 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 told the expert, Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University, they had 2,000 centrifuges operating 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 (to the team)," one source said.
Another source said Hecker was "stunned" by how modern and sophisticated the uranium enrichment facility was at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex.
But 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 facility.
Separately, the U.S. State Department said Stephen Bosworth, an envoy responsible for policy toward 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 confirmation of a uranium enrichment facility was likely to 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 (light water reactor) 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."
Bosworth and an inter-agency U.S. team will arrive in Seoul on Sunday, travel to Tokyo on Monday and Beijing on Tuesday before returning to Washington on Wednesday.
The State Department did not elaborate on the reasons for the trip, which seemed certain to focus on the latest disclosures about North Korea's nuclear programs and how to respond to them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101121/ts_nm/us_korea_north_usaTommyt
