N.Korea’s Nuclear Facilities ‘a Disaster in the Making’
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is using nuclear weapons development to maintain his firm grip on power, but a compilation of North Korean state media reports the Unification Ministry has gathered since June 2000, the reclusive leader has never visited the main Yongbyon nuclear complex.
Experts say this is unusual given that Kim has undertaken more than 100 of his so-called on-the-spot guidance tours this year alone, to anything from shoe factories to military units. One theory is that the site is simply too dangerous. Yongbyon “is such a ‘sensitive’ location that he may have made secret visits, but there is a good chance that he avoided visiting the site due to fears of radiation,” an intelligence official said.
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The plutonium extraction facility is the main reason for the radioactive contamination. “Radioactive materials such as neptunium, americium and curium are released in the process of extracting plutonium by melting spent nuclear fuel rods with nitric acid,” said Hwang Il-soon, a nuclear scientist at Seoul National University. “The problem is that these materials have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years.” That means the radioactive contamination possibly caused by the Yongbyon nuclear facility is a problem that will not go away.
There are also facilities in Yongbyon that store the nitric acid and other liquid waste generated from melting spent nuclear fuel rods, but they were covered with dirt, while new buildings have been built over them to cover them up. Other landfills storing solid radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel rods, have been covered with soil and trees. Since North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors in 2002, nobody knows for sure what is going on in Yongbyon.