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Comment by alphabettsy | Hacker News Reader

Is it me or is the electricity generation bit barely mentioned?

It seems like there is some ambiguity around the purpose of the reactor:

"It has the potential to make 25 to 30 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a small town. The plant could also potentially produce about 20 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year"

A bit further down the article says:

"Analysts also found some evidence that could support North Korea’s assertion that the new reactor would be used for power generation. Satellite images appeared to show that power lines and a transmission tower had been erected around the site."

Without weapons inspectors, or some other outside group taking a look, there is no way to know for sure.

As far as I know, a reactor can be used for both purposes at the same time.

To be efficient as a power plant a reactor needs to spend most of its time operating. If you want to make nuclear material for bombs with this kind of reactor it will enter a number of startup-shutdown cycles, which would make it inefficient, and would be very noticeable. Of course they recently extended the coolant outflow quite a bit to mask the thermal signature of operation, but it should still be possible to determine a rough operational schedule.

[1] suggests that it is at least possible to do both simultaneously, and it would be a relatively cheap way to address suspicions to add the power lines even if they aren't being used (would a plutonium-producing reactor also require a connection to the grid?). I agree that without inspection you can't really say how it is being used.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239 : "[C]ommercial nuclear power reactor designs [...] could have machinery added that would permit U-238 slugs to be placed near the core and changed frequently, or it could be shut down frequently, so proliferation is a concern".

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