The Facts Of North Korea Nuclear And WMD Program

Noisy Room Text quoted below:
"Professionals at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge Laboratories estimate it would take up to ten years to dismantle all programs and operations in North Korea. Further, Tehran, Moscow and Beijing will work hard to delay what they can due to eliminating evidence of their respective involvement for decades in North Korea.

The Nine Steps Required to Really Disarm North Korea

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and TROY GRIGGS JUNE 11, 2018

NYT’s: The vast scope of North Korea’s atomic program means ending it would be the most challenging case of nuclear disarmament in history. Here’s what has to be done to achieve — and verify — the removal of the nuclear arms, the dismantlement of the atomic complex and the elimination of the North’s other weapons of mass destruction.

Nuclear Capabilities

• Dismantle and remove nuclear weapons
  Take apart every nuclear weapon in the North’s arsenal and ship the parts out of the country.
• Halt uranium enrichment
  Dismantle the plants where centrifuges make fuel for nuclear reactors and atom bombs.
• Disable reactors
  Shutter the nuclear reactors that turn uranium into plutonium, a second bomb fuel.
• Close nuclear test sites
  Confirm that the North’s recent, staged explosions actually destroyed the complex.
• End H-bomb fuel production
  Close exotic fuel plants that can make atom bombs hundreds of times more destructive.
• Inspect anywhere, forever
  Give international inspectors the freedom to roam and inspect anywhere.

Non-Nuclear Capabilities

• Destroy germ weapons
  Eliminate anthrax and other deadly biological arms, under constant inspection.
• Destroy chemical weapons
  Eliminate sarin, VX and other lethal agents the North has used on enemies.
• Curb missile program
  Eliminate missile threats to the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

President Trump says he is meeting Kim Jong-un in Singapore because the North Korean leader has signaled a willingness to “denuclearize.’’

But that word means very different things in Pyongyang and Washington, and in recent weeks Mr. Trump has appeared to back away from his earlier insistence on a rapid dismantlement of all things nuclear — weapons and production facilities — before the North receives any sanctions relief.

Whether it happens quickly or slowly, the task of “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization’’ — the phrase that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo keeps repeating — will be enormous. Since 1992, the country has repeatedly vowed never to test, manufacture, produce, store or deploy nuclear arms. It has broken all those promises and built a sprawling nuclear complex.

Full article here.