N. Korea can produce plutonium for 1.5 bombs in 6 months: expert+

BEIJING, April 25 Kyodo - North Korea, which said Saturday it has begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, may be able to produce plutonium for about one and a half nuclear bombs in less than six months, a leading nuclear weapons expert said.

Siegfried Hecker, a professor at Stanford University, also said in a telephone
interview with Kyodo News that Pyongyang could make some key facilities at the
Yongbyon nuclear complex operational in six months by reversing disablement
steps.
North Korea announced last week that it is pulling out of the six-way
denuclearization talks and restoring its facilities at Yongbyon, which was
being disabled under a multilateral denuclearization-for-assistance deal.
In keeping with that position, North Korea said Saturday it has started
reprocessing nuclear fuel rods that were in a reactor in Yongbyon, a step
necessary for producing weapons-grade plutonium.
''It will require less than six months to reprocess the 8,000 spent fuel rods
that were in the reactor,'' Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, said in the interview held shortly before Pyongyang's announcement
that it has begun reprocessing.
''It is estimated that these contain somewhat less than 8 kilograms'' of
plutonium, or enough for roughly one and a half bombs, according to Hecker, an
occasional visitor to North Korea.
Nuclear fuel rods are first irradiated in a reactor. They are then taken out
and cooled before being reprocessed.
Approximately 80 percent of the 8,000 nuclear fuel rods were discharged from
the reactor as part of disablement steps before work was halted on April 14.
North Korea could pull out the rest in a relatively short time, and in the
meantime, begin by reprocessing those that have already been taken out,
according to Hecker.
Hecker also said the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon could become operational in
six months by rebuilding the cooling tower, which was destroyed last June as
part of the denuclearization process, and putting new fuel rods into it.
While the new fuel rods could only be placed in the reactor after parts of the
fuel fabrication facility are restarted, that could also be achieved within the
six-month time frame, he said.
''Once they put new fuel in, they would continue to have a capacity of
producing approximately 6 kilograms (of plutonium) a year,'' Hecker said,
confirming the nuclear complex would have the same level of efficiency before
the disablement process began.
A portion of the fuel fabrication facility is believed to require more than a
year to restore, but that would not affect plutonium production for the first
few years, he said.
As for the possibility of North Korea conducting another nuclear test following
its first experiment in 2006, Hecker said, ''Another test would give them a
significantly greater knowledge about nuclear weapons design, and so another
nuclear test would be a very damaging event.''
''But I do not know the likelihood of that,'' he added.
North Korea said it was restarting the Yongbyon nuclear complex in reaction to
an U.N. Security Council statement criticizing its April 5 rocket launch, which
Pyongyang has denounced as unjust.
North Korea says the rocket put a satellite into orbit, but many other
countries see it as a cover for testing the country's long-range missile
technology.
Hecker has visited North Korea six times, and has been to the Yongbyon nuclear
complex in three of those trips.
==Kyodo