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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (326770)	2/21/2007 12:03:13 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576725

"CJ, there are more barriers to getting the bomb than just producing the weapons-grade material." Yes. But, given enough Pu-239, which they had because of their graphite reactors that Carter wanted to take offline, those barriers could be overcome. Which, they did. "Train more North Korean scientists (the ones getting first dibs on rice donations) to calibrate and maintain the light water reactors, and you'll help North Korea take yet another step toward producing more potent nuclear weapons." Earth to Tench. Because we didn't follow through with our promise of the LWRs, NK fired up their graphite reactors, took down the cameras, and did exactly what you are saying denying them the reactors would prevent. To get there with LWRs would have required them developing the methods for handling the spent fuel rods and being able to separate Pu-239 from the more prevalent Pu-240. The latter step being especially tricky. They already had the fast path to nuclear weapons with their graphite reactors. Forcing them to go the route of trying to separate isotopes would have slowed them down and possibly stopped them. Given they way they failed to get a decent yield on their first test, something everyone else managed to do, there are reasons to suspect that NK scientists aren't really up to snuff. Given their situation, that isn't a huge surprise.