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Follow-up talks between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean officials are scheduled, and Trump said last week: "It will be a total denuclearization, which has already begun to take place" .
Assuming the denuclearization of North Korea takes place, what would it look like and how much would it cost?
What does denuclearization mean?
It's far from clear and can have different meanings for each side.
The exact form of denuclearization will depend on the negotiations. North Korea may seek to pursue certain nuclear activities with possible civilian uses such as uranium enrichment, as Iran is able to do as part of its agreement with the major powers .
For Washington, however, denuclearization means at least eliminating the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons. This requires removing or dismantling existing weapons, closing the program that makes them, and limiting or eliminating Pyongyang's ability to enrich uranium and produce plutonium , another key ingredient of atomic bombs.
North Korea's ballistic missile programs should also probably be restricted or eliminated.
Unknown Known and Unknown
To further complicate matters, little is known about North Korea's nuclear activities, its weapons program, and its ballistic missile capabilities. It is among the most secretive activities in a highly secretive state that foreign intelligence services have struggled to penetrate.
North Korea has conducted six more and more powerful nuclear tests since 2006 and has surprised foreign governments with a series of missile tests showing rapid improvement in technology and increased range.
Pyongyang tested in December an intercontinental ballistic missile that, according to governments and experts, seemed to bring all the continental United States within range, although many believe that it has not yet developed completely. the reentry vehicle in which the warhead returns to Earth. the atmosphere at the approach of its target.
Beating heart
Historically, the Yongbyon complex north of Pyongyang was at the heart of North Korea's nuclear program. It houses a reactor that produces spent fuel from which plutonium is reprocessed, and an experimental reactor that badysts observing satellite imagery say is about to be completed.
It is also believed that Yongbyon would house a uranium enrichment plant, although many experts claim that one or more more important enrichment sites are likely to exist outside Yongbyon.
Continuing the reprocessing of plutonium and enrichment of uranium, North Korea has developed the two paths for obtaining fissile material for nuclear weapons.
While Yongbyon is closely monitored by satellites and monitored by IAEA inspectors prior to their deportation in 2009, much less is known about facilities elsewhere in the world. the country.
Nuclear badyst David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security quoted an unnamed "official source" as saying that about half of North Korea's nuclear facilities are located at the same time. outside Yongbyon and the site where he conducted nuclear tests.
Few precedents
There are few cases where a country has voluntarily abandoned nuclear weapons. Those who did it in special circumstances, and provide flawed badogies.
South Africa closed its nuclear weapons program and dismantled its weapons shortly before the end of apartheid in 1994. Several former Soviet republics abandoned their weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Of these, Ukraine had the most, about 5,000, and it remained the longest.
South Africa kept its secret nuclear weapons program until it dismantled its six atomic bombs and destroyed many documents relating to them, which means that the cost is not known. The weapons were dismantled in just a few months.
In Ukraine, which had strategic ground weapons with about 1,250 nuclear warheads, a Defense Ministry official said that the United States had disbursed about $ 350 million to dismantle the silos from from which these missiles would have been launched.
At its peak, the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine was the third largest in the world. North Korea is much smaller – its exact size is not known but several badysts estimate that it has about thirty weapons.
So how much?
Given the uncertainties involved, most badysts are reluctant to be more specific than predicting the costs of denuclearization amounting to billions of dollars.
"I think it would be fair to say that the dismantling and cleansing of a substantial part of the North Korean nuclear complex (without even considering the missile complex) would cost several billion and would take about 10 years, "said Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear scientist and professor from Stanford University who visited Yongbyon in 2010.
In 2008, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of dismantling the Yongbyon reactor and two adjacent fuel rod factories separating plutonium from spent fuel, transporting its spent fuel out of the country, to $ 575 million. the retreatant. He said it should take four years.
North Korean nuclear activities and reserves have increased significantly since 2008. There is now a second reactor at least in Yongbyon and the CBO's estimate does not cover uranium enrichment. , weapons installations, missile technology or uranium mines.
Verification
For the whole process to work, Washington will have to be convinced that North Korea has declared all of its sites and activities relevant. Verification is likely to play an important role.
Any doubt as to whether North Korea has declared all of its activities could lead to a dispute like this on the question of whether Iraq had stocks of weapons of mbad destruction before the US invasion of this country in 2003. A balance will have to be struck between transparency and intrusion.
The cost of IAEA safeguards activities for Iran, where the agency controls the country 's nuclear deal in 2015, was 15.8 million. euros last year, according to an IAEA confidential report obtained by Reuters.
But the IAEA was already inspecting nuclear facilities declared by Iran before the agreement was reached. Starting from scratch in North Korea will be much more expensive. "If you take the annual cost of IAEA verification and monitoring in Iran and multiply it by three or more, you will get a rough estimate of the annual cost for North Korea after a denuclearization agreement." . Mark Fitzpatrick Studies have said.
"North Korea's nuclear program is more secretive than that of Iran and, in terms of nuclear weapons, much more advanced."
The chief secretary said that the government would make a decision on the road that the train should be introduced.
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