North Korea Working With Uranium at Vast New Plant | Hacker News Reader

North Korea Working With Uranium at Vast New Plant

nytimes.com

51 pointstalbina39 comments

"American officials know that the plant did not exist in April 2009, when the last Americans and international inspectors were thrown out of the country. The speed with which it was built strongly suggests that the impoverished, isolated country, which tested its first nuclear device in 2006, had foreign help and evaded strict new United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed to punish its rejection of international controls. "

Do you think they're using Siemens controllers on those centrifuges?

Makes me rethink the purpose of Stuxnet.

It wasn't "discovered", the North Koreans showed it to a visiting nuclear scientist, who would know exactly what he's being shown. It's probably a negotiating tactic for more hard currency/aid for the regime.

This looks like North Korea is starting the next crisis, expecting aid in exchange for stopping their actions.

Some explanation about previous crisis: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KK12Dg01.html

Sigh, so when are we sending kids to die in North Korea?

Because North Korea doesn't even have the electric infrastructure or appliances to explain that development for a power plant.

This is all going to end very badly.

Not going to happen. Whatever happens in North Korea it's China's problem.

Or China's plan.

I suspect China would not be too happy about a nuclear North Korea in its backyard. And they definitely wouldn't want North Korea to actually nuke the South.

So, if it looks like Kim Jong Il is getting really serious about starting hostilities, China will allow the U.S. and South Korea to invade the North and topple the Kim dynasty, while it looks the other way.

Moreover, China could strike a bargain with the U.S.: "We let you take North Korea, you let us take Taiwan."

I think they would ultimately want to control them better. They could use NK to issue crazy threats and manipulation to the world, which they could not do directly. They could also use it to export arms and nuclear technology to foreign countries.

US has those countries and I am sure China would like them too.

I doubt that. NK is a useful pawn for China, and an ally and buffer against the US military in SK. Nukes there also make them more of a problem for the US, Japan, and SK than for China.

And there's no way they'd ever let the US take the entire Korean Penninsula. Remember they pushed the US back when we got too close to the Chinese border in the Korean War. Not happening, ever.

Both you and rdtsc make good points.

However, I don't think China would want NK to actually use the nukes. China would want to maintain status quo.

So, if it looks like NK is serious about using nukes, China (I believe) will allow a U.S.-led invasion. But, as you said, they wouldn't want the U.S. to get too close to their border, so maybe China itself would invade from the North, creating a buffer zone between itself and the U.S. forces.

Another scenario: Maybe in the case of a U.S. invasion, China will allow the Kim dynasty to enter China and request asylum, and in return China will occupy a small part of North Korea to keep as a buffer.

I don't know as much about the Korean conflict as much as some other members here, and many of my guesses might be wrong.

I wonder if a nuclear-armed Japan is part of China's plan.

If they built this facility in a year and a half, building infrastructure won't be a problem - at least for them to claim.

I doubt many kids will die in North Korea. They've already demonstrated a nuclear or near-nuclear (IE it fissled rather than popped) capability. With this facility, if they've been producing for a while then they're fully-nuclear for sure and could be striving for thermonuclear.

I seriously doubt the intelligence of our leaders, but I'm sure there'll be a military coup before actual soldiers land in NK while nukes are potentially still present.

With the way North Korea is going I wouldn't doubt their government putting nukes inside their major cities.

Have you seen the North Korea vs South Korea at night photo?

http://i.imgur.com/IsWh1.jpg

All the resources are going into their war machine.

If could/would build infrastructure, it would have been done long ago.

There won't be a coup, they are all brainwashed.

I think a plant for refining weapons grade nuclear material counts as their war machine.

Granted, the rest of their infrastructure sucks, but I don't think their dumb enough to build a plant without power. And they do know how to keep power running. Does anyone actually think the Great Leader lives in some un-lit hovel?

Technically, the Great Leader doesn't live anywhere. He died in 1994, although he retains his official status as head of the North Korean state. He is presently located in a museum near Pyongyang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Death

The Dear Leader, now, he's still alive. He's less accessible than his father... but he probably spends more time underground.

This is some sort of doctored photo.

Here is an actual photo from a reputable source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/images/dprk-dms...

Agreed that the other photo is dodgy, but there's not actually that much difference between it and yours. North Korea at night is largely dark, either way.

The photo you posted indicates only one metropolitan area (Pyongyang). In the GlobalSecurity photo, there are several metros lit up (one speck of light from space is considerable amount of people).

The photos can be dramatically different depending on year or a time of day. Street lighting in DPRK is not organic or municipal, and they often have been short on energy.

Is that photo generated from the WOPR?

Whether they can or can't build the infrastructure means nothing. They built this plant in 18 months (allegedly), what do you think is going to come up at the UN?

They've got two responses - 1) no this has always been there, your inspectors are incompetent. As everybody, even you, knows NK doesn't have the ability to do this kind of project normally (IE outside funding our last ditch effort - regardless it's out of the norm) or 2) Yes we built this plant in 18 months to enrich uranium, the power plants are under construction now and the grid will be ready for when the plant commences operation.

This is so out of character that the response is either "yeah right dumbass, like that happened" or "dumbass, the rest is easy".

We probably won't send ground troops in to die, we'll perform targeted airstrikes on key infrastructure targets.

We came extremely close in the early 90s (this may or may not be public knowledge, so I won't elaborate).

We came extremely close in the early 90s (this may or may not be public knowledge, so I won't elaborate).

How do you know about it?

Top men told him. Top. Men.

I was one of the people deployed to make such a thing happen. It was around the same time Nixon died.

And now you're divulging secret information on the Internet. Sure buddy.

It's not really secret in itself (but I'm sure operational details are still classified), as we did flyovers over NK and Japan (Where we caused quite a stir. They don't like to see US bombers flying overhead)

I'm not one to break opsec :)

Here's a web forum link briefly mentioning it:

http://www.gateway.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthrea...

They already have nuclear weapons. And ICBMs.

The big problem is not how many American troops would die in a conflict with North Korea (such a conflict could be "won" with zero American losses, in theory), but how many South Korean and North Korean civilians would die. Unfortunately, nobody has figured out a way to remove the North Korean regime that doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of South Korean civilian deaths.

Exactly. Even assuming that they don't have properly working nuclear weapons at this point (a decent assumption, their last test was a fizzle), there is an absolutely absurd amount of conventional artillery positioned at the DMZ just a few dozen kilometres away from Seoul. If all out war were to occur the city, with it's 25million or so citizens, could be levelled in hours.

Wouldn't it simply be a matter of bombing the ever loving shit out of those artillery positions? Given that firering a single shell effectively means that they have given away their position, and that the US posses planes invisible on radar this shouldn't be that damn difficult.

War is not like it is in the movies.

You:

1) overestimate the number of such planes the US has at it's immediate disposal

2) overestimate the effectiveness of artillery triangulating systems

3) underestimate the shear size of the DPRK forces

4) overestimate the amount of time each artillery position would have to be active to kill thousands of civilians in a densely populated metropolis.

And finally: fail to take into account that if you've had this idea, chances are people who do military planning for a living have probably thought long and hard about it as well.

It's not so simple. Consider the basic equation. Mostly unpopulated, desolate, rugged terrain in the North where artillery can hide. Heavily populated metropolitan areas in the South where Northern artillery can hit. You would need to blanket a huge area of the North with devastating bombardment in order to remove all of the artillery positions. Meanwhile, every single shell fired from the North will likely result in civilian deaths in the South. And they can fire a lot of shells in a very short amount of time.

The only way to guarantee taking out all of the Northern artillery positions would be carpet bombing with nukes, which would result in lots of deaths in South Korea from fallout (not to mention all the other much more serious problems involved, such as establishing a precedent of preemptive nuclear attack).

In reality, the situation is even more complicated than this simplistic analysis. It's not so easy to take out an artillery position in a previously undetermined location, especially if that artillery position can be hidden in a cave/bunker on a moment's notice. More so if there are thousands of artillery positions spread over many square miles.

Even if the artillery in the North survives only a few hours or even a few minutes the sheer number of them and the population density of the regions of South Korea within artillery range would lead to catastrophic civilian deaths in the South.

The South Koreans have been militarily capable of stomping all over the North for decades, without American help. The fact that they haven't yet, despite numerous provocations from the North, is a testament to the huge losses that they would inevitably face if a hot war broke out again on the Korean peninsula.

Edit: Current estimates are that North Korea has the capability to fire around 10,000 rounds a minute into heavily populated regions near Seoul.

Nuclear weapons are just invasion insurance policy. Also, useful bargaining chips in exchange for foreign aid.

The solution would be just to halt all foreign aid and sign a peace treaty, or remove all options, including the nuclear one, from the table. This would give the NK leaders no foreign enemies, perhaps leaving lower ranked party members seeking to overthrow them.

I don't exactly agree with you, but I'm curious why you were downvoted. Isn't anyone else sick of buying off these troublesome countries with aid and arms? Just look at the Israel situation, the US is offering them 20 stealth warplanes, free of charge (among other things), just so they stop building in the West Bank for 90 days.

So your definition of troublesome is "doesn't do what I want"?

If you want someone to do something you need to convince them, and incentives is one way. I suppose force is another.

You may think Israel should stop building, but Israel doesn't think so. I don't see any reason your opinion counts for more.

Question for those with a bit more strategic policy knowledge than myself - what's wrong with just taking the "spoiled child" policy of ignoring them completely?

Seems to me the latest round of crisis talks is just the attention they were looking for. A public yawn in their direction seems more appropriate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com