Discover

__NOTOC__
The 'Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center'^[1] is North Korea's major nuclear facility, operating its first nuclear reactors. It is located in the county of Yongbyon in North Pyongan province, 103 km north of Pyongyang.
The major installations include all aspects of a Magnox nuclear reactor fuel cycle, based on the use of unenriched natural uranium fuel:

★ a fuel fabrication plant,

★ a 5 MWe experimental reactor producing power and district heating,

★ a short-term spent fuel storage facility,

★ a fuel reprocessing facility that recovers uranium and plutonium from spent fuel using the PUREX process.
Magnox spent fuel is not designed for long-term storage as both the casing and uranium metal core react with water, it is designed to be reprocessed within a few years of removal from a reactor. As a carbon dioxide cooled, graphite moderated Magnox reactor does not require difficult-to-produce enriched uranium fuel or heavy water moderator it is an attractive choice for a wholly indigenous nuclear reactor development.
Construction of the 5 MWe experimental reactor began in 1980, and the reactor first went critical in August 1985. This reactor was an initial small technology proving reactor for a following development program of larger Magnox reactors. It operated intermittently until 1994 when it was shut down in accordance with the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. Following the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in 2002, operation restarted in February 2003, creating plutonium within its fuel load at a rate of about 5 kg per year. The reactor fuel was replaced between April and June 2005. The spent nuclear fuel has been reprocessing with an estimated yield of about 45 kg of plutonium metal, some of which was used for the nuclear weapon involved in the 2006 North Korean nuclear test.North Korean Fuel Identified as Plutonium, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, New York Times, October 17, 2006
Yongbyon is also the site of a 50 MWe Magnox prototype power reactor, but construction was halted in 1994 about a year from completion in accord with the Agreed Framework, and by 2004 the structures and pipework had deteriorated badly. By 2005 North Korea had redesigned the plant, so reconstruction could commence.
Another 200 MWe Magnox fullscale power reactor was being constructed at Taechon, 20 km north-west of Yongbyon, until construction was also halted in 1994 in accord with the Agreed Framework. By 2005 reconstruction of this reactor was uneconomic.
The center also has an IRT-2M pool-type research reactor, supplied by the Soviet Union in 1963, operational since 1965.^[2] As the center has not received fresh fuel since Soviet times, this reactor is now only run occasionally to produce Iodine-131 for thyroid cancer radiation therapy.

Contents

2007 shutdown

See also

References

External links

2007 shutdown

On Tuesday 13 February, 2007, an agreement was reached at the Six party talks that North Korea will shut down and seal the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and invite back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications. In return for this North Korea will receive emergency energy assistance from the other 5 parties in the form of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived at the site on June 28 to discuss verification and monitoring arrangements for the shutdown.^[3] This had been delayed from April due to a dispute with the United States over Banco Delta Asia.^[4] On June 3 an anonymous South Korean government official indicated that the shutdown may start following the first oil shipment later in the month.^[5] On July 14, Sean McCormack stated that North Korea had told the US that the reactor had been shut down. He added that the US welcomed the news, and was awaiting verification from the International Atomic Energy Agency team.^[6] The next day, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei announced the UN's confirmation that the reactor had been shut down.^[7] On 18 July 2007, the IAEA confirmed that all five nuclear facilities at Yongbyon had been shut down.^[8]

See also

★ North Korea and weapons of mass destruction

References

1. "Yongbyon" is spelled and pronounced 녕변 (Nyŏngbyŏn) in North Korea and 영변 (Yŏngbyŏn) in South Korea.
2. Research Reactor Details - IRT-DPRK
3. U.N. nuke inspectors go to N. Korea reactor, ''CNN'', published 2007-06-27, accessed 2007-07-03
4. N Korea warning on nuclear deal
5. [1], ''Bloomberg'', published 2007-07-03, accessed 2007-07-03
6. ''N Korea "closes nuclear reactor"'' BBC News retrieved July 14 2007
7. "UN confirms N Korea nuclear halt", ''BBC News'', 16 July 2007
8. "N Korea closes more nuclear sites", ''BBC News'', 18 July 2007

External links

★ Facilities in the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea Under Agency Safeguards – IAEA, 31 December 2003

★ North Korea: No bygones at Yongbyon – Robert Alvarez, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 2003

★ Background information and satellite images of Yongbyon – GlobalSecurity.org

★ DPRK will re-open Nuclear Facilities to Produce Electricity – Sin Yong Song, Vice Minister of Power and Coal Industries, 27 January 2003

★ Visit to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea – Siegfried S. Hecker, 21 January 2004

★ Technical summary of DPRK nuclear program – Siegfried S. Hecker, 8 November 2005

★ North Korea’s Corroding Fuel, David Albright, ISIS – Science & Global Security, 1994, Volume 5, pp. 89–97

★ Disposal of Magnox spent fuel – BNFL, 14 November 2000

★ Implementation of the U.S./North Korean Agreed Framework on Nuclear Issues, GAO, June 1997 (GAO/RCED/NSIAD-97-165)