The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [164]
The second day of negotiations took place in the North Korean Mission in Geneva, the first time they had been on North Korea's home turf-all the meetings in New York and the first one in Geneva had been in American buildings. The DPRK Mission had been polished up for the occasion, complete with gleaming silver trays on which were arrayed delicate Swiss pastries. This was in startling contrast to the minimal hospitality of the rich Americans, who had had to scrape up their own private funds to provide even coffee and rolls served on paper plates. With appropriate fanfare in this elaborately prepared setting, North Korea put forward an initiative that would change the nature of the negotiations.
The DPRK had undertaken a peaceful nuclear program in good faith, Kang Sok Ju began, using natural uranium, which is mined in the country, and gas-graphite technology, which was widely available. While it had no intention of producing nuclear weapons, he insisted, other nations were concerned that the facilities had a big potential for weapons production. The DPRK, he announced, was willing to shift its entire nuclear development program to more up-to-date, less proliferation-prone light-water reactors (LWRs) to fill its energy needs, if these could be supplied by the international community.
Light-water reactors, originally so named to distinguish them from reactors using deuterium oxide, or heavy water, rely on ordinary water to moderate the nuclear reaction that produces energy. They are much more complex than the primitive gas-graphite reactors, which were in service or under construction in Yongbyon. Unlike the Yongbyon works, virtually all the key LWR components were beyond North Korea's technological capability and would have to be imported from abroad. LWRs would produce vastly more energy: If it were working well, Yongbyon's only operating reactor, rated at 5 megawatts (5 million watts), would produce only enough electricity to power perhaps five large American office buildings; but two standard LWRs would produce 2,000 megawatts-nearly enough electricity to power the Washington metropolitan area.
The Americans at the conference table with technical expertise were unimpressed with what one called a "totally hare-brained" scheme, because of the expense and complexity involved. Energy experts realized that North Korea's electricity requirements could be met much more easily and cheaply with nonnuclear fuels. But other members of the U.S. team immediately saw Pyongyang's offer as a face-saving way to resolve the proliferation and inspection questions. It could modernize its nuclear power production without ever admitting it had been seeking to make atomic weapons. As soon as Kang announced his offer, Robert Carlin, the senior North Korea-watcher in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, wrote on his note pad, "They want out of this issue."
Gallucci was skeptical at first that North Korea was serious about trading in its indigenous nuclear program, but he quickly saw the positive possibilities for international control of the North Korean program. He also saw the immense difficulties, especially the high costs involved. "The last time I looked, such reactors cost about $1 billion per copy," he told the North Koreans.
North Korea's quest for light-water reactors, although new to most of the Americans at the conference table, actually had a long history. The Soviet reactors that Pyongyang had requested in the mid1980s were to have been of the light-water type. Although the SovietDPRK deal to supply them ultimately collapsed, the allure of more modern nuclear facilities remained undimmed in leadership circles in Pyongyang. When IAEA director general Hans Blix visited North Korea in May 1992, he was asked to help North Korea acquire lightwater reactors and to guarantee a secure supply from abroad of the enriched uranium fuel they would require. Blix promised to try to help. Two months later, DPRK deputy premier Kim Dal Hyon, on