The First Element Of A North Korean Nuclear Proliferation Network – Analysis

By Robert Kelley

On the night of 6 September 2007 Israeli jets bombed a building in Northen Syria.  The building was alleged to be a nuclear reactor under construction to support a nuclear weapons program.  The reactor was reported to be a copy of the small plutonium production reactor in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).

There are many allegations in this strange story, but the most important is that the government of DPRK, headed Kim Jong Un was selling nuclear technology.  The reactor would have produced weapons grade plutonium (WGPu) for an Iranian bomb.  It is likely that the final customer, Iran, paid cash for the design of the reactor, construction assistance and possibly nuclear fuel.

There are many loose ends in this story.  How materials were to be transported.  Associations between DPRK, Iran and Syria.  Why Iran would have chosen a North Korean reactor in Syria to make plutonium when Iran had a uranium-focused program.  The absence of support facilities.  But if there is any truth to this story, confirmed by the US CIA,^[1] the Israeli Government and many independent sources, DPRK was exporting bomb-related materials for cash.^[2]  After exploding its own first nuclear bomb in 2006.

Similarity to A Q Khan of Pakistan

This event is very important because it connects directly to events in 2003 in DPRK.  It is also a sharp reminder of the nuclear proliferation network of A Q Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist.  Khan acquired critical gas centrifuge enrichment technology, by espionage, in the early 1970’s.  He used that technology to assist Pakistan in producing enough highly enriched uranium to build a significant stockpile of uranium-based nuclear weapons.

Once Pakistan had mastered enrichment technology, and satisfied its own weapons material needs, Khan turned to exporting the knowledge he had acquired.  He offered nuclear weapon design information to Iraq in 1990.  Using reverse espionage, he offered and then supplied gas centrifuge knowledge to Iran that is the basis of Iran’s very large uranium program.  He supplied actual centrifuges to Libya in 2004.

Very importantly, Khan began supplying actual centrifuges and advanced design knowledge to DPRK as early as 1998.  DPRK embraced this technology.  It built its own gas centrifuge plants.  The earliest western confirmation of a DPRK uranium enrichment plant was in 2010 by a team of American visitors.  That plant was reported to have started construction 2009 and the Americans believe it was not the first plant.  It was too large and too well-engineered to be the first prototype.

Kim Jong-Un Demands More Weapons Grade Uranium

In 2023 the Chairman of the DPRK, leader Kim Jong Un exhorted his technical cadre to rapidly increase the production of fissile materials for weapons.  The increase could only mean that gas centrifuge enrichment was the necessary production route. Nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants to separate WGpu are not easy to build quickly or to hide.  Increments of additional plutonium production are slow and might take a decade from start to finish and even then, fissile materials production rates in small reactors are slow.  Centrifuge cascades can be built in small increments and added frequently as machines are produced and floor space increases.

It is clear that DPRK has been enriching uranium since 2010 and probably before.  This has led to a significant HEU stockpile, probably far exceeding the small plutonium stockpile that DPRK has produced.  Western estimates of plutonium production are relatively accurate because of the many observables around the single DPRK production reactor and reprocessing plant.

Things like water vapor condensation visible from cooling towers, river turbulence are independent observables that help analysts determine operating time.  In addition, many western observers have been in the reactor facility and reprocessing plant for years.  IAEA has made measurements and documented quantitative data.

The uranium enrichment program is completely different.  It has never been inspected at close range, only a single observation from a distance for a few minutes.  The building that was observed is known and it has been doubled in size according to overhead imagery.^[3]  Other plants are suspected but completely unknown.

In 2024 the first-ever photographs inside a DPRK centrifuge plant were published.  The original observers can say that the buildings look different from what they saw. The  externals of the machines are not the same as the 2010 observations.^[4]

The very respected Federation of American scientists (FAS) predicted in 2024 that DPRK may have produced enough HEU for at least 50 and possibly 90 basic nuclear weapons.^[5]  This is enough for a huge military offensive capability for a small country : DPRK.

Most of its military targets are presumably in the Republic of Korea, South Korea (ROK).  Neglecting threats against the United States, DPRK has enough nuclear weapons to saturate ROK.  The exhortation to greatly increase fissile material production suggests a second purpose.

DPRK as a Nuclear Proliferation Network

There is already one accepted instance of DPRK selling nuclear weapons technology in return for cash.  DPRK is a notably poor country that survives by any means legal or not.  Heavily sanctioned, it makes money with counterfeiting, cryptocurrency, computer hacking and sanctions busting.  Fissile materials sales could be another valuable source of income.

DPRK has conducted several successful nuclear tests.  Their most recent standardized weapon design fits in missiles, bombs and torpedoes.  The A Q Khan network serviced DPRK in its quest for enrichment technology.

DPRK has already benefited from smuggling nuclear technology into the country from Khan and quite a few other sources.  On at least one occasion it has tried to export technology for cash.  Now it appears Kim is poised to possibly begin a proliferation network of his own.

There is a Proliferation Market in the 21st Century

Traditional non-proliferation thinking has been that States are the only customers for nuclear weapons.  Only States have the resources and technological capability to build nuclear weapons.  The nonproliferation regime, through IAEA materials verification, has considered all States to be equally suspect, but this has evolved to focus largely on a few States with regional ambitions.

Several developed States, even throughout Europe, studied and decided against nuclear weapons programs.  Successful proliferation suppression outcomes in Iraq, Libya and South Africa have led to a generally peaceful world focused on other military activity.  Iran is the obvious outlier today as peace remains elusive in the Middle East.

Iran

Iran was once an alleged customer for DPRK plutonium assistance.  Iran gave up plutonium long ago and has a vital uranium enrichment program, that it argues strongly is only for civil purposes.  The Iranian nuclear program is under intensive IAEA nuclear materials verification activity.  In over 20 years only one nuclear facility has been discovered that Iran failed to declare.

It seems unlikely that there are additional unknown plutonium reactors, enrichment plants, reprocessing plants or necessary fuel cycle activity in Iran.  Most proliferation concern is that Iran will back out of IAEA safeguards and attempt to misuse known nuclear facilities.

It would be a foolish red line for Iran to back out of safeguards and misuse facilities known to the West.  During the time it would take for Iran to turn civilian facilities to military use there would certainly be military consequences.  If Iran remains under transparent IAEA verification all its known nuclear facilities can be verified to remain in peaceful activities.

A weaponization program has very few external observables and is completely outside the mandate or expertise of the IAEA.  If Iran had a clandestine source of imported HEU, it could easily develop a significant stockpile of DPRK designed and tested weapons and become a nuclear power quickly and silently.  Past assistance from DPRK in missiles and the reactor in Syria, show this is possible.

A Dark Web of Material Supply

DPRK is in the position of creating a bank of nuclear material available to the highest bidder.  The country has an excess of fissile material, namely Very Highly Enriched Uranium, and has publicly boasted of accelerated production of even more.

The lessons of the A Q Khan network of nuclear supply should not be lost.  Khan sold the  means of producing nuclear materials.  That has led to several countries achieving threatening status.  This threat was tempered by the necessity of a country needing time and enormous technical effort to produce the material.

The direct sale of nuclear weapon-usable nuclear material would bypass this industrial hurdle and remove many of the intelligence indicators that a State was on the verge of proliferation.  There would be no warning.  The threat would be complicated by the possibility that DPRK also provided  proven nuclear explosive designs.

It is not just States that will be of concern in the next decades.  Individuals of unparalleled power are appearing in several regions of the world.  The ability of a rich individual to drive policy either of his own, or by manipulating a State program is a possibility that has not existed before.

Conclusion

Throughout the 1970’s Pakistani A Q Khan ran a network designed to produce Very Highly Enriched Uranium and give Pakistan the nuclear material for a bomb.  He succeeded.  Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he reversed the process and created a consequential nuclear proliferation network.  He supplied enrichment technology, some nuclear materials, and in at least one case, alleged designs for a nuclear explosive.  We need to have learned some lessons from his activities.

In 2007 the Leader of North Korea supplied assistance to build a weapons plutonium reactor in Syria.  This may have been his first attempt to create a proliferation network.  Now he has exhorted his cadre to produce more fissile materials; produce more and do it quickly.  This can only be done quickly by adding uranium enrichment capacity.  He has already been very successful at generously increasing his own growing stockpile.

The ability to supply a developing world with unlimited VHEU, a working tested bomb design, possibly even nuclear explosives themselves.  This is a moment to seriously remember what A Q Khan accomplished in reducing world security.  Time to make sure a new A Q Kim does not replace Khan.

• About the author: Robert Kelley is a licensed nuclear engineer in the State of California.  He worked in several roles within the US Department of Energy laboratories as a research reactor supervisor, a plutonium metallurgist and program manager for nuclear intelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  As Laboratory Director of the USDOE Remote Sensing Lab he managed nuclear emergency response programs and remote sensing applications for spectral imagery and radiation detection.  In the early 1990s and again in the 2000s he was a Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency managing nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq, South Africa, Libya and many other countries. In 2021 he became a lecturer in physics and a consultant for the Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament at Uppsala University in Sweden.  He is currently a Distinguished Associate Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and domiciled near Vienna, Austria.

[1] US convinced of Syria’s covert activity, World Nuclear News, Friday, 25 April 2008, https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-convinced-of-Syria-s-covert-activity

[2] Background Briefing with Senior U.S. Officials on Syria’s Covert Nuclear Reactor and North Korea’s Involvement  April 24, 2008, https://irp.fas.org/news/2008/04/odni042408.pdf 

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/world/asia/north-korea-uranium-enrichment.html

[4] https://www.38north.org/2024/09/a-closer-look-at-north-koreas-enrichment-capabilities-and-what-it-means/

[5] https://fas.org/publication/north-korean-nuclear-weapons-2024/