Ultimately, the larger problem is that President Trump’s policy objectives are unattainable.
Denuclearization is a non-starter from North Korea’s perspective because Kim believes – not without reason – that nuclear weapons are a matter of regime survival, having seen what happens to leaders in countries like Libya when they give up their nuclear programs.
As long as President Trump insists on “complete, verifiable and total denuclearization,” Washington is walking America down a path that leads to (likely nuclear) military conflict
It would be both foolish and naïve to think that all the tough talk coming out of the Trump administration is simply meant to intimidate North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un into giving up his nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
The three so-called “adults in the room” who are apparently the strongest voices influencing President Trump’s foreign policy are National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Mattis is an active duty lieutenant general in the Army. Mattis and Kelly are retired Marine Corps generals. Their common experience is commanding ground forces in the Iraq War. If they are shaping the Trump administration’s North Korea policy, it stands to reason that their views would have a decidedly military tilt.
If President Trump decides to take military action, what might it look like?
Any unprovoked U.S. military action would be a preventive strike. That is, a military strike intended to prevent North Korea from acquiring a future capability to attack the U.S. That is different from a preemptive strike that is launched to stop an imminent military attack from an adversary.
So what military options are truly available to President Trump?
Option 1: Preventive nuclear strikes.
It’s impossible to completely rule out the possibility – however remote – that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons in a preventive strike against North Korea.
If North Korea’s nuclear program and weapons are in deeply buried and hardened bunkers, nuclear weapons might be the only way to destroy them with a high rate of confidence. A relatively little-known fact is that the United States has a nuclear bunker buster: the B61-11 low- yield nuclear gravity bomb.
About 50 B61-11 bombs are believed to be deployed. Theoretically, the B61-11 could be mated with GPS guidance to make it a precision strike weapon. Also, the B61-11 could theoretically be outfitted with the BLU-113 hardened steel-tipped warhead to penetrate more than 30 feet of concrete.
But wouldn’t using nuclear weapons be beyond the pale?
Under ordinary circumstances, yes. But the Trump administration may not believe these are ordinary circumstances. If the administration assumes military conflict with North Korea is inevitable and views North Korea as 1945 Japan, the rationale would be very similar: Using nuclear weapons would bring about a quick resolution and would save thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost in a conventional conflict. As a point of reference, more than 30,000 U.S. soldiers died in the Korean War.
Needless to say, the nuclear option would be a big gamble. If we were not 100 percent successful, we would have to expect that North Korea would retaliate with its full range of conventional and nuclear weapons.
While the U.S. homeland would not be threatened, both South Korea and Japan would be. And the nearly 35,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea would certainly be at risk – as would the estimated 200,000 or more U.S. citizens living in South Korea.
Option 2: Decapitation strikes by bombers or submarines.
Another big gamble would be a decapitating air and missile strike. This would be military action based on the belief that if North Korea’s leadership – Kim Jong Un and his most loyal top military and civilian leaders – could be killed, the regime would implode and collapse.
Success would depend on near-perfect intelligence about all the targets’ whereabouts. Moreover, we would have to assume that many of them – including Kim himself – would be in deeply buried and hardened bunkers that would be difficult to destroy, even with precision conventional missiles and bombs.
And we know from experience that we were not able to immediately take out Saddam Hussein and the other 54 “most wanted Iraqis” when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
If a decapitating strike failed, we would have to assume that North Korea would retaliate and we would be drawn into a protracted ground war.
At a minimum, North Korea would likely unleash a conventional artillery barrage on Seoul, which has a population of 10 million. While such an attack might not level Seoul, it would still cause significant damage and extract untold casualties. Kim might launch his nuclear weapons, believing he had nothing to lose.
Option 3: Conventional ground attack with hundreds of thousands troops.
So that leaves a conventional ground attack, which would likely be preceded and backed up by air and missile strikes.
Given the experience of McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly – as well as the fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, is a Marine – such an option makes sense and seems more likely. After all, expeditionary war is exactly what these generals know how to do.
However, almost all the experts believe that any such war would be drawn out and costly –perhaps as many as 20,000 deaths per day in South Korea.
And remember, Kim Jong Un would have the nuclear option at his disposal, along with his chemical and biological weapons. Such is the risk of any military action against a nuclear-armed country.
Option 4: Deterrence.
But the U.S. does have another military option. It just doesn’t involve the actual use of military force. It’s called deterrence.
North Korea has had nuclear weapons for at least a decade and has not used them against either South Korea or Japan. Presumably this is because of the threat of a U.S. nuclear response looms over Pyongyang’s head. If that’s the case, even in the worst case scenario of North Korea having the ability to launch a missile at the continental United States, deterrence would still hold.
Deterrence worked when America and the Soviet Union had thousands of warheads pointed at each other. Supposedly crazy or irrational leaders with nuclear weapons – such as Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China – were successfully deterred.
Indeed, Kim Jong Un would have to be suicidal to actually attack the U.S., knowing that we could respond with utterly devastating force that could result in his death and the total annihilation of his country. However, the Kim dynasty has repeatedly demonstrated its larger interest is its own survival and perpetuating the regime.
Ultimately, the larger problem is that President Trump’s policy objectives are unattainable.
Denuclearization is a non-starter from North Korea’s perspective because Kim believes – not without reason – that nuclear weapons are a matter of regime survival, having seen what happens to leaders in countries like Libya when they give up their nuclear programs.
As long as President Trump insists on “complete, verifiable and total denuclearization,” Washington is walking America down a path that leads to (likely nuclear) military conflict
North Korea rejects Donald Trump’s call for nuclear talks, as images emerge of ‘ballistic submarine’ under construction, Telegraph, Reuters News Agency 17 NOVEMBER 2017
North Korea has rejected Donald Trump’s call for talks over its nuclear programme just days after the US president completed his high-profile to Asia.
Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said that negotiations would not happen while America continued “war games” in the region.
The snub occurred as new satellite images suggested North Korea is pursuing an “aggressive schedule” to build its first operational ballistic missile submarine.
The developments mark a double setback for Mr Trump, who is seeking a breakthrough in the stand-off over North Korea after rallying support for his approach in Asia.
However speaking to Reuters, Mr Han rejected the proposal and criticised America for carrying out joint military practices with South Korea.
“As long as there is continuous hostile policy against my country by the US and as long as there are continued war games at our doorstep, then there will not be negotiations,” Mr Han said.
“There are continued military exercises using nuclear assets as well as aircraft carriers, and strategic bombers and then…raising such kinds of military exercises against my country.”
Mr Han said North Korea’s nuclear programme was about protection, saying: “This is the deterrent, the nuclear deterrent to cope with the nuclear threat from America.”
He also claimed Mr Trump drive for tighter sanctions was to “overthrow” the regime by “isolating” it and creating a “humanitarian disaster”.
China has contested Mr Trump’s claim that a “freeze for freeze” proposal – where North Korea stops its nuclear development and America ends its military war games – was off the table.
China’s nuclear spaceships will be ‘mining asteroids and flying astronauts to the moon’ as it aims to overtake US in space race State media publishes Chinese scientists’ ambitious plans to revolutionise space travel and exploration in coming decades, South China Morning Post, Stephen Chen: Friday, 17 November, 2017 China is on course to develop nuclear-powered space shuttles by 2040, and will have the ability to mine resources from asteroids and build solar power plants in space soon after, according to state media. The ambitious claims, made by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology – the country’s leading rocket developer and manufacturer – were published on the front page of People’s Daily on Friday.
According to the report, a new “nuclear fleet” of carrier rockets and reusable hybrid-power carriers will be ready for “regular, large scale” interplanetary flights, and carrying out commercial exploration and exploitation of natural resources by the mid-2040s.
China will catch up with the United States on conventional rocket technology by 2020, it said. In 2025, it is expected to launch a reusable suborbital carrier and start suborbital space tourism.
By 2030, it aims to put astronauts on the moon and have the capabilities to bring samples back from Mars. In the 2040s, a nuclear-powered fleet will be ready to carry out mining operations on asteroids and planets, the report said…..
“The nuclear vessels are built to colonise the solar system and beyond,” Wang Changhui, associate professor of aerospace propulsion at the School of Astronautics at Beihang University in Beijing, said…..
A nuclear spaceship would have a reactor loaded with radioactive fuel for fission – the splitting of atoms that produces large amounts of energy.
That energy could be used to generate a driving force as well as electricity for the craft’s on-board equipment….
During the cold war, dozens of satellites equipped with various types of nuclear reactors were launched by the former Soviet Union and the United States..
But the nuclear space race was eventually postponed, partly due to its threat to humanity. In 1978, Russian spy satellite Kosmos 954 crashed and sprayed radioactive waste over an area of 124,000 square kilometres in Canada.
More than 30 dead nuclear satellites are still drifting in space and could fall to earth at any time over the next few thousand years.
“Safety issues will be the top challenge for the Chinese nuclear fleet,” Wang said. “If they come down, it will cause a global nuclear disaster.”
According to China’s space authorities, the nuclear shuttles would be docked at a transport hub that would orbit the earth. Reusable spacecraft would be used to transport people and cargo to and from the shuttles.
But even if they were permanently in space, the nuclear-powered vessels were still at risk of being hit by meteorites or even colliding with one another, Wang said.
Japan Atomic Power in dire straits after diverting funds, Asahi Shimbun, By TSUNEO SASAI/ Staff Writer, November 17, 2017
Japan Atomic Power Co. has diverted so much of its decommissioning funds to build new reactors that it now lacks enough cash to scrap its aging units or even resume operations of existing ones. The problem-plagued company is banking on a decision by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, but even that might not be sufficient to save it financially.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry requires nuclear power plant operators to accumulate decommissioning funds every year based on their estimated costs to scrap reactors.
The ministry’s guidelines, however, do not prohibit the companies from temporarily using the accumulated money for other purposes.
According to calculations, Japan Atomic Power should have saved around 180 billion yen ($1.6 billion) to decommission its four nuclear reactors. The company declined to give details about how much of decommissioning fund was used for other purposes. However, a person familiar with the situation said the operator “diverted the majority.”
That leaves Japan Atomic Power without the necessary funds to carry out its plans to decommission its one-reactor Tokai nuclear plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the No. 1 reactor at its Tsuruga nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture.
The company’s two other reactors–the reactor at the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant and the No. 2 reactor at the Tsuruga plant–are off-line. To survive the financial crunch, Japan Atomic Power will soon apply to the NRA to extend the operating life of the idled Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant reactor. That reactor will reach its 40th year of operation in November 2018. Even if the NRA approves the 20-year extension, the company does not have the 174 billion yen needed to improve safety measures at the reactor to bring it online.
An active geological fault line was found running directly beneath the No. 2 reactor building at the Tsuruga nuclear plant, meaning a resumption of reactor operations there is nowhere in sight.
Japan Atomic Power decided to use decommissioning funds to cover costs to build the Tsuruga No. 3 and No. 4 reactors in a bid to curb borrowing from financial institutions, according to several sources.
However, that decision was made before disaster struck at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
Continuing Conflict S. Korean Gov’t Stops Virtually Construction of New Nuclear Power Plants Seoul, Korea, Business Korea, 17 November 2017 , Choi Mun-hee
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) held a board meeting on November 16 and decided to stop the construction of the third and fourth units of the Shin Hanul Nuclear Power Plant and the first and second units of the Cheonji Nuclear Power Plant. Controversies are likely to continue with hundreds of billions of won already invested in the construction projects and the government having yet to prepare a plan for compensation.
Those in favor of the construction of the nuclear power plants are claiming that nuclear power plants are safe tools for power generation as seen in the case of those that endured the magnitude 5.4 earthquake in Pohang on November 15. Those opposed to the construction are claiming that South Korea is not an earthquake-free zone and, as such, no more nuclear power plant should be allowed.
The Joint Action for a Nuclear Free Society, which is a local environmental group, held a press conference in Seoul on November 16. “Both the earthquake in Gyeongju last year and the recent earthquake in Pohang occurred in the Yangsan fault zone in the southeastern region of the Korean Peninsula and the latter’s epicenter was shallower and the latter caused more damage although the former had a larger magnitude,” it said, adding, “At present, a total of 18 nuclear power plants are in operation and five are under construction in the southeastern region of the peninsula including Gyeongju, Busan, and Ulsan, where big earthquakes have occurred one after another, and the operation of the power plants should be stopped and safety measures should be prepared immediately.”…… http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19848-continuing-conflict-s-korean-gov%E2%80%99t-stops-virtually-construction-new-nuclear
Environmental groups that support the current administration’s nuclear energy phaseout policy have based their arguments on the potential dangers posed by natural disasters like earthquakes.
In a statement made yesterday, the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement reiterated the need to scale back nuclear energy operations in southeastern Korea, saying, “On the heels of the Gyeongju earthquake last year, there has been a quake on the Yansan fault line.”
Last September’s 5.8-magnitude earthquake in Gyeongju was the most powerful recorded in South Korean history. With the November 15 earthquake in nearby Pohang, only about 20 km away, the Yeongnam region has seen record-setting natural disasters in successive years.
A U.N. body has called on Japan to take steps to better protect press freedoms as concerns about the country’s laws aimed at curtailing leaks of state secrets could hinder the work of journalists.
In another of the 218 non-legally binding recommendations on Japan’s human rights record released by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s working group, Tokyo was urged to apologize and pay compensation to “comfort women” forced to work in Japan’s World War II military brothels.
The recommendations reflected the views of some 105 countries. Of the issues raised, the U.N. council will adopt those that have been accepted by the country in question at a plenary session around March 2018.
In relation to freedom of the press in Japan, the recommendation called on the country to amend Article 4 of the broadcasting law that gives the government authority to suspend broadcasting licenses of TV stations not considered “politically fair.”
Japan had already attracted criticism, in particular from David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, over its law called the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which came into force in 2014.
Under the law, civil servants or others who leak designated secrets could face up to 10 years in prison, and those who instigate leaks, including journalists, could be subject to prison terms of up to five years.
In his report, Kaye noted that the law may be arbitrarily enforced as subcategories under which information may be designated as secret are “overly broad.”
On the issue of “comfort women,” raised at the request of South Korea and China, the recommendation urged Japan to promote fair and accurate historical education, including the women’s stories, and to apologize and compensate victims.
The recommendation also said Japan should abolish or suspend the death penalty, reflecting calls from European Union countries, and continue to provide support to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear crisis caused by the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In particular, a directive to address health issues faced by pregnant mothers and children was noted.
The U.N. Rights Council is mandated to “undertake a universal periodic review” of whether countries are meeting their human rights obligations and commitments.
The examination is conducted on all 193 members of the United Nations in periodic cycles of a few years. The latest review was the third for Japan.
In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula Trump’s harsh rhetoric, coupled with the North Korean regime’s ongoing weapons tests, have escalated regional tension to unprecedented levels
IANS | Tokyo Business Standard, November 16, 2017Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.
The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.
North Korea nuclear crisis: Japan bracing itself for influx of evacuees if war erupts
Coast Guard readies plans to escort boats from peninsula to designated ports as brinkmanship continues between Pyongyang and Washington The Independent, 16 Nov 17 Japan is studying plans to cope with an influx of perhaps tens of thousands of North Korean evacuees if a military or other crisis breaks out on the peninsula, including ways to weed out spies and terrorists, a domestic newspaper said.
The Japan Coast Guard would escort boats fleeing North Korea to designated ports, where police would screen them by checking their identity and possible criminal records and expel those deemed a threat, The Yomiuri newspaper said on Thursday.
It did not say where those people would be sent, however.
Evacuees granted temporary entrance would be transferred to emergency detention centres, probably in southern Japan, after completing quarantine and other procedures.
Officials would then decide whether they were eligible to remain in Japan, The Yomiuri said.
Regional tension over Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear arms programmes remain high.
The United States and its allies continue to cajole and threaten North Korea to negotiate an agreement that would relinquish its growing nuclear and ballistic-missile Staff – By Ted Galen Carpenter
The United States and its allies continue to cajole and threaten North Korea to negotiate an agreement that would relinquish its growing nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. The latest verbal prodding came from President Trump during his joint press conference with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. Trump urged[3] Pyongyang to “come to the negotiating table,” and asserted that it “makes sense for North Korea to do the right thing.” The “right thing” Trump and his predecessors have always maintained, is for North Korea to become nonnuclear.
It is unlikely that the DPRK will ever return to nuclear virginity. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for retaining its nukes. For a country with an economy roughly the size of Paraguay’s, a bizarre political system that has no external appeal, and an increasingly antiquated conventional military force, a nuclear-weapons capability is the sole factor that provides prestige and a seat at the table of international affairs. There is one other crucial reason for the DPRK’s truculence, though. North Korean leaders simply do not trust the United States to honor any agreement that might be reached.
Unfortunately, there are ample reasons for such distrust. North Korean leaders have witnessed how the United States treats nonnuclear adversaries such as Serbia[4] andIraq[5]. But it was the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011 that underscored to Pyongyang why achieving and retaining a nuclear-weapons capability might be the only reliable way to prevent a regime-change war directed against the DPRK.
Partially in response to Washington’s war that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, ostensibly because of a threat posed by Baghdad’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi seemed to capitulate regarding such matters. He reconfirmed his country’s adherence to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in December of that year and agreed to abandon his country’s embryonic nuclear program. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and pledged that they no longer sought to isolate Libya. Qaddafi was welcomed back into the international community once he relinquished his nuclear ambitions.
That reconciliation lasted less than a decade. When one of the periodic domestic revolts against Qaddafi’s rule erupted again in 2011, Washington and its NATO partners argued that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent (despite meager evidence[6] of that scenario), and initiated a military intervention. It soon became apparent that the official justification to protect innocent civilians was a cynical pretext, and that another regime-change war was underway. The Western powers launched devastating air strikes and cruise-missile attacks against Libyan government forces. NATO also armed rebel units and assisted the insurgency in other ways.
Although all previous revolts had fizzled, extensive Western military involvement produced a very different result this time. The insurgents not only overthrew Qaddafi, they captured, tortured and executed him in an especially grisly fashion. Washington’s response was astonishingly flippant. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quipped[7]: “We came, we saw, he died.”
The behavior of Washington and its allies in Libya certainly did not give any incentive to North Korea or other would-be nuclear powers to abandon such ambitions in exchange for U.S. paper promises[8] for normal relations. Indeed, North Korea promptly cited the Libya episode as a reason why it needed a deterrent capability—a point that Pyongyang has reiterated several times in the years since Muammar el-Qaddafi ouster. There is little doubt that the West’s betrayal of Qaddafi has made an agreement with the DPRK to denuclearize even less[9] attainable[10] than it might have been otherwise. Even some U.S. officials concede[11] that the Libya episode convinced North Korean leaders that nuclear weapons were necessary for regime survival.
The foundation for successful diplomacy is a country’s reputation for credibility and reliability. U.S. leaders fret that autocratic regimes—such as those in Iran and North Korea—might well violate agreements they sign. There are legitimate reasons for wariness, although in Iran’s case, the government appears to be complying[12] with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Tehran signed with the United States and other major powers in 2015—despite allegations from U.S. hawks about violations.
When it comes to problems with credibility, though, U.S. leaders also need to look in the mirror. Washington’s conduct in Libya was a case of brazen duplicity. It is hardly a surprise if North Korea (or other countries) now regard the United States as an untrustworthy negotiating partner. Because of Pyongyang’s other reasons for wanting a nuclear capability, a denuclearization accord was always a long shot. But U.S. actions in Libya reduced prospects to the vanishing point. American leaders have only themselves to blame for that situation.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea[13]. He also is the author of more than seven hundred articles and policy studies on international affairs.
China will send a high-level diplomatic envoy to North Korea, Business Insider, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard, Reuters, Nov. 15, 2017 BEIJING— A senior Chinese diplomat will visit North Korea on Friday as a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing said, though it did not say the envoy was planning to discuss North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
China has repeatedly pushed for a diplomatic solution to the crisis but in recent months has had only limited high-level exchanges with North Korea. The last time China’s special envoy for North Korea visited the country was in February 2016.
In a brief dispatch, China’s Xinhua news agency said Song Tao, who heads the ruling Communist Party’s external-affairs department, would leave for North Korea on Friday.
The roadmap was released by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s primary space contractor. CASC is the company that builds China’s successful Long March family of rockets, and its roadmap sets the company’s goals from the end of this year all the way out to 2045.
The first goal is to have the next-gen Long March 8 rocket ready by 2020. This rocket is currently in development and designed to be a low-cost, light payload rocket that can carry small satellites to orbit.
Then, in 2025, CASC plans to have developed a reusable space plane that can take off and land horizontally. This space plane would be a two-stage-to-orbit spacecraft primarily used for space tourism. The company hopes to improve on this design and complete a single-stage-to-orbit plane by 2030.
This plan is, in a word, ambitious. While a few single-stage-to-orbit aircraft have been considered in the past, none have made it to the prototype stage and all have been abandoned as impractical. But CASC’s plan is not done there.
By 2035 the company wants to make its entire line of rockets reusable, and by 2040 it hopes to have an entirely new line of launch vehicles. These will include a nuclear-powered space plane and other vehicles capable of “multiple interstellar round-trips, exploiting space resources through asteroid mining and constructing megaprojects such as a space-based solar power station,” whatever that means.
Of course, just because CASC puts these ambitious goals in a roadmap doesn’t mean any of them will actually happen, but it does show that the Chinese space community is confident about what they think they’ll achieve over the next few decades. We’ll just have to wait and see if that confidence will pay off.
PAWB is proud to announce a new partnership with Friends of the Earth Japan
in the campaign to oppose Hitachi’s plans to build two huge nuclear
reactors at Wylfa. To confirm the partnership, Ayumi Fukakusa from Friends
of the Earth Japan will be visiting Ynys Môn and Gwynedd between November
18 and20. During her visit, Ayumi will discuss their campaigning in Japan
against exporting Hitachi and Toshiba nuclear technology to Wales and
England. She will also explain how their campaign focusses on halting JBIC,
Japan Bank for International Cooperation and NEXI, Nippon Export and
Investment Insurance finance and insurance for nuclear power projects
outside Japan. http://stop-wylfa.org/wp/
North Korea nuclear arsenal too developed to destroy quickly, says Moon, Christine Kim, 14 Nov 17, SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday it would not be easy for reclusive North Korea to destroy its nuclear arsenal quickly, even if wanted to, given its weapons programs were so developed. North Korea is under heavy international pressure to end its weapons programs, pursued in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. But it has vowed never to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Speaking to reporters in the Philippines, Moon said that if North Korea agreed to hold talks, negotiations could be held with all options open.
“If talks begin to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue, I feel it will be realistically difficult for North Korea to completely destroy its nuclear capabilities when their nuclear and missile arsenal are at a developed stage,” Moon said in a briefing.
“If so, North Korea’s nuclear program should be suspended, and negotiations could go on to pursue complete denuclearization.”…….
The North defends the programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.
U.S. President Donald Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as North Korea races toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.
Trump threatened in his maiden U.N. address to “totally destroy” North Korea if the United States was threatened and has said the time for talking, the policy of previous U.S. administrations, is over.
Moon reiterated his stance that now was the time to increase pressure on North Korea so that it would come to talks……..
He said differences in understanding between South Korea and China, North Korea’s lone major ally, regarding the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on South Koran soil had not been resolved.
The equipment, weighing 72 tons, was lifted up to the upper part of the plant’s No. 3 reactor using two large cranes.
The pool, located on a floor 36 meters above the ground, holds a total of 566 spent and unused nuclear fuel assemblies. Tepco plans to begin removing the fuel from the storage pool in the middle of fiscal 2018.
The installation work was originally slated to start Saturday, but was postponed due to strong winds.
With the device, the fuel assemblies will be moved from the pool to sturdy containers, which will be tightly sealed to block any emissions of strong radiation.
The work will be conducted in the water-filled pool, and then the containers will be then lowered to the ground using a different crane and transferred to another pool some distance from the reactor, where they will be stored.
The building housing the No. 3 reactor was heavily damaged by a hydrogen explosion that occurred shortly after the power station was knocked out by the tsunami following the magnitude 9 earthquake in March 2011.
After debris from the blast was removed from the upper part of the No. 3 reactor, Tepco started work in late July this year to install a cover on top of the reactor to shield the fuel-removing equipment from weather damage and prevent radioactive materials from spreading.
The crane to be used for lowering the fuel containers to the ground is slated to be installed in the upper part of the reactor on Nov. 20.
nuclear-news 