PYONGYANG, North Korea - It boils down to one small nuclear reactor, an outdated complex that seems harmless enough, yet has provoked consternation around the world.
The Yongbyon reactor has given impoverished and isolated North Korea badly needed economic aid and national pride -- and produced atomic bombs.
The country appears ready to shut the reactor down for the first time in more than four years under an agreement with the U.S. and four other countries. UN nuclear inspectors arrived in North Korea on a rare trip Tuesday to talk about its closure, following months of delays.
The 5-megawatt reactor is the centrepiece of North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Center, about 60 miles northeast of Pyongyang, and is capable of churning out enough plutonium each year to make one atomic bomb. Plutonium is the most common fuel in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has long said that the reactor operation is aimed at generating electricity. Few believe this claim; the U.S. chief nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill once quipped that not a single light bulb in North Korea had been switched on with power generated by the reactor.
Yongbyon is the North's sole operating nuclear reactor, and its closure means the communist regime will no longer produce plutonium. It's unclear exactly how many bombs North Korea has, although experts say that it has enough plutonium to have made anywhere from seven to 14 weapons.
Also subject to closure is what is known as a "radiochemical laboratory," a facility where plutonium is extracted by reprocessing spent fuel rods removed from the reactor. It is unclear if any other facilities in the 10-square-mile complex would be closed, such as an unfinished 50-megawatt reactor as well as fuel manufacture and waste storage facilities.
The country also has an unfinished 200-megawatt reactor in Thaechon, about 12 miles away.
The Feb. 13 agreement among the six nations involved in the nuclear talks -- the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia -- also calls for North Korea to disable and ultimately dismantle the reactor and all other nuclear facilities in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.
Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Korea University, said there would be little disagreement in talks between the team from the International Atomic Energy Agency and North Korean officials in terms of the technical aspects of a shutdown.
But he raised doubts whether the North would offer a concrete timeframe. "The IAEA team could travel out of North Korea without a specific roadmap," Nam said.
He speculated that North Korea made some demands when Hill visited Pyongyang last week, and the country is unlikely to specify a shutdown date until it gets a U.S. response to them.
One of the possible demands could have been for the U.S. to help North Korea regain access to the international financial system, Nam said. Over the weekend, North Korea said Hill's discussions in Pyongyang included "boosting cooperation in the field of financial transaction in the future."
Were the North to shut down Yongbyon, it would not be the first time it has suspended operations there. The reactor was shuttered for about eight years under a 1994 agreement between the North and the U.S. that defused an earlier North Korean nuclear crisis.
Pyongyang restarted the reactor in early 2003 after kicking out UN nuclear monitors in the first months of the second nuclear crisis that broke out with U.S. accusations that the North had a secret, uranium-based atomic bomb program.
The crisis culminated with the North's first-ever nuclear test last October.
Nuclear activity at Yongbyon dates back to 1965 when the former Soviet Union helped build a tiny research reactor there.
North Korea added the 5-megawatt, graphite-moderated reactor to the complex in 1986 after seven years of construction. The country began building the 50-megawatt and 200-megawatt reactors in 1984, but their construction was suspended under the 1994 deal with Washington.
It takes about 8,000 fuel rods to run the reactor. Reprocessing the spent fuel rods after a year of reactor operation could yield more than 15 pounds of plutonium -- enough to make at least one nuclear bomb, experts say.
North Korea was supposed to close the reactor by mid-April under the February deal. The country ignored the deadline due to a separate banking dispute with the U.S., which has now been resolved.
No new deadline is set for the shutdown. But Hill said after his trip to the North last week, the highest-level U.S. visit there since late 2002, that the government showed readiness to shut down the reactor quickly, possibly within three weeks.
