Safety, verification questions hang over North Korea’s plan to close nuclear site

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance with Ri Hong Sop (3rd L) and Hong Sung Mu (L) on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS/File Photo

By Josh Smith and David Brunnstrom

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Shutting down North Korea’s nuclear test site is trickier than it might seem.

A botched tunnel collapse could spread radioactive debris. Nuclear material might be buried, but accessible enough to be dug up and reused in a weapon. And even if all the testing tunnels are destroyed, North Korean engineers could simply dig a new one if they want to conduct another nuclear test.

Disarmament experts have raised many such scenarios after North Korea said over the weekend that it would use explosives to collapse the tunnels of its Punggye-ri nuclear test site next week.

Pyongyang has publicly invited international media to witness the destruction, but not technical inspectors, leaving disarmament experts and nuclear scientists wondering how effective the plan is – and whether it will be safe.

Recent reports indicate that some areas of the Punggye-ri test site have become unstable after the latest and largest nuclear test in September.

More explosions would be unnecessarily risky, but there are steps North Korea could take to make the shutdown more credible and safe, said Suh Kune-yull, professor of nuclear energy systems engineering at Seoul National University.

“Blowing up isn’t the most ideal way,” Suh said. “It might be less dramatic than an explosion, but filling the tunnel up with concrete, or sand or gravel would be best.”

There is still a considerable amount of radiation being detected at one of the tunnel complexes where most of North Korea’s nuclear tests have taken place, including the latest test of what North Korea said was a fusion bomb, he said.

But underground nuclear test tunnels and shafts are typically designed to be sealed by the nuclear bomb’s blast wave before radioactive material can escape. Some experts noted that North Korea over the course of its six nuclear tests probably learned how to prevent radiation leaks.

“If it’s done well, there is no risk of radiation being released. But the question is, are these tunnels being sealed in a way that they couldn’t again be used?” said Jon Wolfsthal, the director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and a former senior arms control official at the U.S. National Security Council.

“The only risk I see is that we will take the destruction of a couple of tunnels as a physical barrier to the resumption of testing in the future.”

MESSY HISTORY

North Korea’s shutting down its test site could be an effort to mirror other nuclear powers that have ended testing, but hung onto their weapons, analysts say.

Suh said beyond closing tunnels and knocking down buildings, the entire Punggye-ri site will need to be secured to prevent the North Koreans or profiteers from digging up nuclear material that could be reused in weapons or sold on the black market.

Previous efforts to close underground nuclear test sites have sometimes been messy, drawn-out affairs, he said.

In 1999, the United States provided $800,000 to pay for a blast equivalent to 100 tons of dynamite to collapse a tunnel at a former Soviet test site in Kazakhstan.

Known as “Plutonium Mountain,” the Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk Test Site covered an area roughly the size of Belgium and was the scene of 456 nuclear tests during the Cold War, including at least 340 underground blasts.

Cleaning up and securing that site took 17 years and $150 million, according to a report by Harvard’s Belfer Centre.

France, which performed 13 underground nuclear tests in the Sahara Desert in the 1960s, says it “shut down and dismantled its nuclear test facilities,” and a 2005 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that most of the sites in Algeria show “little residual radioactive material.”

But local people and Algeria’s government said the tests – including the 1962 “Beryl Incident” when radioactive rock and dust escaped from an underground nuclear blast – left a legacy of environmental devastation and health problems that last today.

China, Pakistan, India are also known to have conducted underground nuclear tests. South Africa – which dismantled its entire nascent nuclear weapons program in 1989 – closed down its underground shafts without conducting a test.

The United States, meanwhile, detonated at least 828 nuclear bombs underground at its Nevada Test Site.

The site remains open, although no U.S. nuclear tests have been carried out since 1992.

‘PERMANENT AND IRREVERSIBLE’

Nuclear experts say the shutdown plan is at least an encouraging political gesture ahead of talks with the United States in June.

But they caution it is not necessarily the first step of the “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement” of the nuclear program the United States has sought.

The U.S. State Department did not give a specific response when asked whether the United States had asked to send observers to the dismantling of the site or for international monitors to be present.

A spokesman said: “A permanent and irreversible closure that can be inspected and fully accounted for is a key step in the denuclearization of (North Korea). We look forward to learning additional details.”

China – which borders North Korea only about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Punggye-ri – has not publicly said whether it would help dismantle the site or monitor the process.

“To my understanding, the North Korean side has not raised this kind of request to the Chinese side,” a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the state-backed Global Times ran an editorial saying that abandoning the testing site “would bring huge benefits to the region.”

Many doubt North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will ever fully relinquish his expensive and treasured nuclear weapons, but even if he curtails his program, analysts warn it will be a long process.

“I am concerned that Kim Jong Un may take unilateral actions that are hard to dispute – like closing the test site – and implement them without any observation,” said Sharon Squassoni, a research professor at the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy in Washington. “This would set up a complicated situation wherein North Korea was taking actions that we would normally applaud, but without any verification.”

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, Matt Spetalnick in WASHINGTON, and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Gerry Doyle)

Iran says could remain in nuclear deal if its interests guaranteed: TV

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a meeting with Muslim leaders and scholars in Hyderabad, India, February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – President Hassan Rouhani hinted on Monday that Iran could remain in its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers even if the United States dropped out but Tehran would fiercely resist U.S. pressure to limit its influence in the Middle East.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a long-time critic of the deal reached between Iran and six powers in 2015 before he took office, has threatened to pull out by not extending sanctions waivers when they expire on May 12, unless European signatories of the accord fix what he calls its “flaws”.

Under the agreement with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China, Iran strictly limited uranium enrichment capacity to satisfy the powers that it could not be used to develop atomic bombs. In exchange, Iran received relief from sanctions, most of which were rescinded in January 2016.

Rouhani said the Islamic Republic had been preparing for every possible scenario, including a deal without Washington – which would still include the other signatories that remain committed to it – or no deal at all.

“We are not worried about America’s cruel decisions … We are prepared for all scenarios and no change will occur in our lives next week,” Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state TV.

“If we can get what we want from a deal without America, then Iran will continue to remain committed to the deal. What Iran wants is our interests to be guaranteed by its non-American signatories … In that case, getting rid of America’s mischievous presence will be fine for Iran.”

“If they want to make sure that we are not after a nuclear bomb, we have said repeatedly that we are not and we will not be,” said Rouhani, who engineered the nuclear accord to ease Iran’s isolation.

“But if they want to weaken Iran and limit its influence whether in the region or globally, Iran will fiercely resist.”

Tehran has made repeated threats to walk away if Trump does, but several Iranian officials told Reuters last week that as long as Tehran was not excluded from the global financial and trading system, it could consider respecting the accord.

Diplomats say Tehran would rather the deal remain intact out of concern about a revival of domestic unrest over economic hardships that mounted over the years sanctions were in place.

EUROPEAN POWERS VOW TO UPHOLD DEAL

Britain, France and Germany remain committed to the accord and, in an effort to address U.S. complaints, want to open talks on Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 – when pivotal provisions of the deal expire – and its role in the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Whatever Trump decides, France, Britain and Germany will stick to the deal because it is the best way to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb, French Foreign Minister Yean-Yves Le Drian said on Monday after meeting his German counterpart.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the deal, which is being policed by U.N. nuclear inspectors, “makes the world safer”, and would do everything possible to uphold it.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, now in Washington for talks, said the deal had weaknesses but these could be remedied. “…At this moment Britain is working alongside the Trump administration and our French and German allies to ensure that they are,” he said in a commentary in the New York Times.

“I am sure of one thing: every available alternative is worse. The wisest course would be to improve the handcuffs rather than break them.”

Even if Trump rejects a possible remedy being worked out by U.S. and European officials and decides to bring back sanctions, the most drastic U.S. measures targeting Iran’s oil sales will not immediately resume.

There are at least two avenues potentially offering more time for talks after May 12.

The agreement has a dispute resolution clause that provides at least 35 days to consider a claim that any party has violated its terms. That can be extended if all parties agree.

And if Trump restores the core U.S. sanctions, under U.S. law he must wait at least 180 days before reimposing penalties on banks of nations that do not slash purchases of Iranian oil.

Iran’s clerical rulers have repeatedly ruled out reducing its sway across the region, as demanded by the United States and its European allies. Tehran says its missile capabilities are purely defensive and nuclear ambitions only civilian in nature.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog says it is maintaining the “world’s most robust verification regime” in Iran and has repeatedly said Tehran is complying with the deal terms.

(Additional reporting by John Irish, Michelle Martin and Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Michael Holden in London; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)