Uranium Gives NKorea Second Way To Make Bombs

Uranium Metal

From Yahoo News/AP:

SEOUL, South Korea – After repudiating negotiations on dismantling its plutonium-based nuclear program, North Korea admitted this month to having an even more worrying way to make bombs.

Following nearly seven years of adamant denials, North Korea announced it can enrich uranium — a simpler method of building nuclear weapons than reprocessing plutonium. Uranium can be enriched in relatively inconspicuous factories that can better evade spy-satellite detection, and uranium bombs may work without test explosions.

The admission — made in a threatening response to a June 12 U.N. Security Council resolution punishing Pyongyang for an underground plutonium bomb test last month — poses a new challenge to the U.S., China, South Korea, Russia and Japan as they seek to stem the reclusive country's atomic ambitions.

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My Comment: The North Koreans have now dropped their trump card. They are essentially telling the world that they can produce the material required for nuclear weapons at a speed and tempo that will be undetectable by surveillance and satellite imagery.

And they are right.

When the Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project was started in the U.S. during the Second World War, scientist quickly learned that of the two metals that can be used in an atomic weapon, manufacturing enriched uranium was easier than manufacturing plutonium. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium device, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was a plutonium device.

The North Koreans do know physics and engineering, and are now publicly telling the world that since their conditions and terms for negotiating an arms agreement have not been agreed upon, they are now pursuing the Uranium option.

The South Koreans and Japanese are justifiably concerned.