Word: reactors
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...seem to be more pressing issues. The U.S. has 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea to guard against an assault by the dangerous dictator to the north, Kim Jong Il. A month ago, Kim admitted he had an atomic bomb program. Last week, he cranked up a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium. And what was the reaction on the streets of Seoul? There was furious protest?but it was directed at the U.S. embassy after the acquittal of two U.S. servicemen for the accidental killing of two South Korean girls...
...North Koreans weren't supposed to be building nukes at all. In the early 1990s, the U.S. suspected Pyongyang was striving to join the atomic club by using plutonium extracted from a Soviet-built nuclear reactor (the CIA at the time said it believed Pyongyang could have one or two bombs). Under a 1994 agreement with the West, North Korea agreed to shut the reactor down in exchange for an ongoing supply of free fuel oil from the U.S. and two tamper-proof reactors for electrical power generation to be built by Japan and South Korea...
...this month, the U.S. suspended oil shipments until Pyongyang agrees to dismantle its nuclear program. So far, there's no sign the North Koreans are willing to play along. In fact, with the 1994 deal as good as dead, some experts warned Pyongyang could retaliate by taking its original reactor program out of mothballs and finishing work on two others. In its report last week, the CIA warned North Korea could in "several years" be churning out up to 281 kg of plutonium a year?enough for dozens of new nukes. No doubt Radio Pyongyang will keep us informed...
...latest confrontation was quite deliberate, says a senior Bush aide. For more than two years, the CIA had been collecting shards of information suggesting that North Korea was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, despite the 1994 Agreed Framework requiring Pyongyang to freeze its program to extract plutonium from reprocessed reactor fuel. (The CIA has long thought that North Korea made--and kept--one or two plutonium-based bombs from before...
Something else Munns calls “handy” is learning how to use a nuclear reactor. He is applying to be trained for submarine duty next year because most astronauts get picked from the submarines...