#8 - RW 265
Russia Expert Says North Korea Can Produce Plutonium Only in Small Quantities
MOSCOW, July 14 (Itar-Tass) -

North Korea can produce plutonium from available 8,000 irradiated nuclear rods "only experimentally and in small quantities". This opinion was expressed on Monday in an interview with Tass by vice-president of the Russian research centre Kurchatovsky Institute Nikolai Ponamarev-Stepnoy, commenting on information from an American spy satellite (circulated by the press of various countries) on alleged discharges of krypton-85 gas in the area of the Korean Peninsula.

"This gas could get into the atmosphere from Russian Far Eastern regions, conducting work with worked-out rods of nuclear power plants," the academician claimed.

According to the vice-president, laboratories, available to North Korean

nuclear physicists, can only hold experiments with radiated rods". "Industrial production of plutonium to manufacture nuclear charges is virtually impossible under such conditions," he noted.

The Russian researcher claimed that "it is now impossible to estimate real volumes of work on plutonium production in North Korea, since North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and does not permit IAEA inspectors to work at its nuclear facilities".

Ponamarev-Stepnoy said that the Kurchatov Institute "had no scientific contacts with North Korean physicists for over a decade".

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