Nord-Koreas kjernevåpenprogram

There is little doubt that North Korea has ambitions for developing nuclear weapons. The incidents in the period of October 2002 and throughout the spring of 2003 have severely strengthened the international community’s concern. Especially the expelling of IAEA’s inspectors and the restart of the reactor in Yŏngbyŏn has escalated the conflict. The greatest immediate concern, however, is the possibility that North Korea has begun reprocessing 8000 spent fuel rods from the reactor, in order to produce weapons grade plutonium for nuclear warheads. This report gives a brief summary of the present situation and a crude assessment of the potential nuclear capacity of North Korea, both presently and in the near future. Possible means of delivering nuclear warheads are also considered. There is also an overview of the key installations and facilities in the nuclear infrastructure. The last chapter comments on some political aspects and possible future scenarios for the conflict, and provides some concluding estimates of the possible number of nuclear warheads. There is a chance that North Korea already is in possession of a handful of primitive, first generation nuclear bombs, although they have never conducted any nuclear tests. It is not certain that the country has capabilities to either construct a complete warhead, nor to deliver such by missile.