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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Nkors Firing Up Reactor.....Wotta Surprise. |
| 2005-08-21 |
| A U.S. satellite has detected signs that North Korea recently restarted a reactor that The surveillance satellite detected steam coming out of a boiler connected to a building housing the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, Asahi Shimbun said, quoting unnamed sources related to six-way nuclear crisis talks, including a senior U.S. official. "We wuz just cooking up a big batch of kimchee. Honest!" The sources said the steam had been detected before the resumption of the six-way talks in late July that aimed to entice the North to give up its nuclear weapons and bomb-making programmes in exchange for economic aid and security guarantees. "It is hard to think that the boiler would operate by itself while the nuclear reactor is stopped. It can only be concluded that North Korea has put in new nuclear fuel rods and has restarted the nuclear reactor," Asahi quoted a U.S. government source as saying. South Korea said in April the reactor's operations had been suspended and the following month, North Korea said it had completed extracting 8,000 fuel rods from the 5 megawatt reactor. Rods from old-style graphite reactors can be processed to extract plutonium, a key component in nuclear bombs. Restarting the reactor could mean the North aims to extract more plutonium from the new rods. North Korea has also spread gravel over a road near a separate unfinished 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. Construction was halted in the 1990s under a previous, and now defunct, nuclear agreement with the United States. Repairing the road could be a sign the North is preparing to resume building work, Asahi said. "North Korea has been suggesting that it is ready to scrap such nuclear reactors, but it is steadily expanding the scope of its nuclear development behind the scenes," the senior U.S. official said. |
| Posted by:Desert Blondie |
| #6 Maybe Kimmie noticed that China's locale for it and Russia's MILEX "Peace Mission 2005" is closer to South Korea than North Korea - you know, China working to stop the North. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-08-21 23:02 |
| #5 Memo to self "Spellcheck dammit" |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-08-21 21:48 |
| #4 "Why do they need a boiler to fire up a nuclear reactor?" Well, when you fire up any major "Engine" you usualy have a standby power souece both to provide the syart-up power, and as a safety measure in case the mains fail at a disastrous point when you REALLY need to run pumps, fans, etc. (Think three mile island when the water pumps were not running) I would suspect that the "Boiler" mentioned provides just such standby power. I was Navy, we used shore power whenever we first started the ship's boilers, and had standby generators in case of power failure or no shore power available. Takes Juice to run fuel and water pumps, burners, flue fans, etc. After startup we could run our own turbine-generators to supply all the power we needed, and then disconnected from shore, and shut down the standby gensets (Diesel in our case) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-08-21 21:46 |
| #3 Whipping up a batch of kimche? |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-08-21 20:33 |
| #2 It's the UPS |
| Posted by: Mona Gorilla 2005-08-21 20:15 |
| #1 ...Why do they need a boiler to fire up a nuclear reactor? Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2005-08-21 18:35 |