I screwed up yesterday and said the Bush administration had gotten the North Koreans to blow up the Yongbyon facility. In fact, they merely blew up the cooling tower which renders the facility unusable but could be rebuilt much more easily than the overall structure. Read Fred Kaplan for a good take on the deficiencies of this bargain and the blunders that got us to this point.
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Back in the DPRK
28 Jun 2008 10:45 am
Comments (9)
they merely blew up the cooling tower which renders the facility unusable
Might not even do that. The picture I saw had what looked like a river in the background. They could use once-thru cooling until they built their new tower (which was old enough it probably needed replacement).
Mr TJ, I bet there is an infra red sensing satellite overhead Yongbyon that would tell us if too many people peed into that river. Assuming that NSA can spare the time between reading our emails.
JohnMcC - You think that'll stop the NK from a restart? It's very technically feasible to restart without a cooling tower, that's what this is pointing out. Not that I'm opposed to the deal, but this bit about "disablement" via demolishing the cooling tower is dubious at best.
You think that'll stop the NK from a restart? It's very technically feasible to restart without a cooling tower, that's what this is pointing out. Not that I'm opposed to the deal, but this bit about "disablement" via demolishing the cooling tower is dubious at best.
Posted by Pan
I'm not sure what you are getting at. You appear to equate disarmament with the demonstrated inability of a nation to go down that path again, or it is not "real disarmament".
The US unilaterally disarmed its nerve gas warfare capacity 35 years ago, its enhanced radiation warheads 20 years ago. We could easily reverse disarmament in those or other items because we, or the Russians, Brits, Japanese, etc. inc. even the NORKs have the technical ability to do so, in a few years.
N Korea isn't exactly an African nation still trying how to fix an airplane or make their own bullets.
With the NORKs disarmament is them saying they won't, and the rest of the world monitoring and saying "You cheated before, you better not again".
I see what TJ was getting at.
The statement "blowing up the cooling tower renders the facility unusable" may be a false statement.
That's it.
The US would find out if North Korea demonstrates that it is a false statement? OK, the statement in that case is still false.
North Korea has the ability to build that level of technology, and cannot be expected to render itself unable to rebuild? OK. If a river can be used as the cooling tower had been used, the statement in that case is still false.
As far as I can see, TJ wasn't getting at anything further than that Matt's correction that North Korea did not destroy the facility but only rendered it unusable did not go far enough. A better correction, taking into account what TJ introduced would be:
(drumroll)
North Korea did not destroy the facility but only may or may not have rendered it unusable by destroying the cooling tower.
"Unusable" may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In order to take water from the river, they'll have to build a new pipeline and intake structure to accommodate the higher water usage. And they'll have to build a caisson and drain the water around the proposed intake structure to build it. That takes months to do and it will be really obvious that they're doing it. They cannot do it either quickly or in secret. We'll find out about any restart and pull out of the deal. And they seem to think the deal is worth more than being able to operate the facility. So, for practical purposes, it's unusable.
All good points above. I'll just add that if you're looking for a quick visible symbol of intent not to use a nuclear facility in the future, blowing up the cooling tower is about the best you can reasonably do. If they had blown up the reactor itself, it would have spread nuclear fallout around the countryside and poisoned that river. They can, and maybe will, bury the whole thing in concrete, but that doesn't make for very good TV.
For those who don't know some of the history of the North Korea nuclear issue.
A Legacy to Die For
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=13060
President George W. Bush says it will be about fifty years before historians can properly evaluate his legacy. Of course, that’s not true; some historians already know what Bush’s legacy will likely be: the deliberate destruction of the existing international nuclear-weapons proliferation-prevention regime.But it is slightly comforting, isn’t it, knowing that God apparently hasn’t told Bush to precipitate Armageddon before leaving office.
According to recent reports by Mainstream Media Persons – who apparently reformat their hard-drives each night before retiring – Bush and Condi-baby are hanging their legacy hopes on the "successful" outcome of the present Six-Party (China, Russia, Japan, United States, South and North Korea) Talks.
Quoth Bush; "If North Korea continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community."
And what would amount to North Korea making the "right choices"?
Well, for one thing, those Dirty Commies could "admit" that Bush was right to charge them in the fall of 2002 with having a "secret enriched-uranium based nuclear weapons program."
Read the whole piece to see how Bush - and Clinton - fucked up this whole business.
Meanwhile, if McCain wins, he'll probably start a war with North Korea - with Pentagon war games estimating fifty thousand US casualties in the first ninety days.
Comments closed July 12, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Did you see that tower before it was blown up? It was practically a ruin. The rest of the facility didn't look any better. Amateurs playing a professional game...
This is a good thing.
Posted by Herb | June 28, 2008 11:18 AM