Satellite imagery suggests flooding in North Korea might have damaged pump houses connected to the country’s main nuclear facility, a US-based think tank said yesterday.
Analysts at 38 North, a Web site that monitors North Korea, said commercial satellite imagery showed how vulnerable the Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center’s nuclear reactor cooling systems are to extreme weather events.
The Korean Peninsula has been hammered by one of the longest rainy spells in recent history, with floods and landslides causing damage and deaths in both North and South Korea.
Photo: reuters/ Airbus Defence & Space and 38 North/ Pleiades/ CNES
Nyongbyon, on the bank of the Kuryong River about 100km north of Pyongyang, is home to nuclear reactors, and fuel reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities that are thought to be used in the country’s nuclear weapons program.
The main reactor — believed to be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium — does not appear to have been operating for some time, and a second reactor has not yet come online, but such flooding in the future would likely force a shutdown, the 38 North report said.
“Damage to the pumps and piping within the pump houses presents the biggest vulnerability to the reactors,” the report said. “If the reactors were operating, for instance, the inability to cool them would require them to be shut down.”
While there was further flooding downstream, it did not appear to reach the Nyongbyon facility’s uranium enrichment plant, and by Tuesday, the waters appear to have receded, 38 North said.
North Korea’s state media has not mentioned any damage to Nyongbyon, but reported this week that senior leaders had been touring flood-stricken areas, delivering aid and providing guidance on how to prevent the high waters from damaging crops.
The South Korean Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the 38 North report, but said it is always monitoring developments related to the North’s nuclear and missile programs and maintaining close ties with the US government.
At a summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last year offered to dismantle Nyongbyon in exchange for relief from a range of international sanctions imposed over the North’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
Trump said he rejected that deal because Nyongbyon is only one part of the North’s nuclear program, and was not enough of a concession to warrant loosening so many sanctions.
Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin
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