Pritchard Witnesses Operation of Reactors in Yongbyon

A former U.S. State Department envoy for North Korea negotiations, Jack Pritchard, who recently visited the North as part of a private delegation, acknowledged on Thursday that the nuclear reactor in Yongbyon was in operation and the storage pond that once contained nuclear fuel rods were empty.

In a briefing on his visit to North Korea at the Brookings Institution that day, Pritchard said, “I have seen five megawatt reactors in Yongbyon operate, and the storage pond for sealed nuclear fuel rod (by IAEA) had been emptied.”

He added, “The North claimed they moved the nuclear fuel rod to the reprocessing facilities in order to reprocess them into plutonium, but I have not verified it myself.”

He also said, “Kim Kye-gwan, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister, denied the nuclear program using enriched uranium and stated that there were no facilities or experts to pursue the program,” he continued saying, “However, there is no way to confirm their denial of enriched uranium program”

The former envoy Pritchard made a visit of inspection to nuclear facilities in Yongbyon and others places from January 6 to 10, together with Sig Hecker, former director of Los Alamos Laboratory, and John Lewis, scholar of nuclear disarmament at Stanford University.

maypole@donga.com