Why Light Water Reactors Won’t Work

Most people that follow the whole North Korea nuclear crisis know that North Korea won’t give up their nuclear weapons just like we know the US won’t build a light water reactor for the North Koreans as well. However, for those that remain unconvinced here is an interesting article in Time Magazine by Henry Solkolski that lays out why the light water reactor proposal is doomed to failure:

Second, respecting the peaceful nuclear rights of such an egregious cheater as Pyongyang can hardly help the international campaign to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons under the cover of an energy program. As one Indian security analyst put it, “Why should India back Washington’s effort to refer Iran’s nuclear misbehavior to the United Nations?” North Korea withdrew from the NPT, made bombs, and has a covert uranium enrichment program it denies exists—yet Washington has affirmed its right to nuclear power plants. Why not treat Iran—an NPT member with an internationally inspected, overt enrichment program—the same?

Consider his enriched-uranium-bomb project. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf testified to Pyongyang’s receipt of assistance from Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment guru, A.Q. Khan. But Pyongyang denies having a program, and U.S. intelligence agencies don’t know where or how many enrichment plants exist. It’s unlikely inspectors could operate any more freely in North Korea than they did in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. There’s no good way to locate Kim’s nukes using special technology. Inspectors will have to ask the regime to learn more, and Kim is sure to demand that the U.S. make concessions for every answer. In this game, Pyongyang’s deck will always be larger than ours.

Make sure you read the rest on your own.