Boiling Fish at Yongbyon

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:22

And I'm Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. How's it going, Aaron? It's okay. We were underwater here in Philadelphia. For people who saw on the news, you know, one of our freeways looked like it was a major sort of like spillway or river going through the center of town.

Jeffrey 0:44

So you were able to stay dry?

Aaron 0:47

Well, I live on the top of a hill, you know, so I was looking down upon all of those who were drenched. But it was pretty incredible, although I slept through most of the rain. So I was unprepared.

Jeffrey 0:58

Friend of Pod Adam Rawnsley was not so lucky. His building lost power, and I believe his car is in a basement garage that is underwater.

Aaron 1:10

It's my old building. I actually used to live in that building long before Friend of Pod and Friend of Mine and yours. Move into that building. And yeah, he seems to have it a lot worse. And I, I do feel for the man because that place should not flood at all. But but, but so is life in 2021.

Jeffrey 1:30

Yeah. The hits, they keep coming.

Aaron 1:36

Do you want to know where else we are seeing some indications of water discharge? Oh, no, Aaron. The discharge of water. We have more.

Jeffrey 1:51

They're not just pumping out a flooded basement garage at Young Beyond, are they?

Aaron 1:57

No, no. We have pumping out of different type of water. We have some news that we want to talk about today.

Jeffrey 2:05

Yeah, so listeners, the IAEA published a report on the implementation of safeguards in North Korea. And one of the things the IAEA does is they monitor North Korean nuclear facilities, which they no longer have access to. They monitor them with commercial satellite imagery. And they saw things that we saw and 38 North saw and other open source organizations saw.

But for whatever reason, we all just kind of observe these things without really stepping back and saying like, yeah, this is kind of a pretty big freaking deal. And the IAEA being extremely competent in its own right, reported that North Korea has restarted its plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon, that North Korea has done another reprocessing campaign using an older load of fuel at Yongbyon, and that there are other indications that would suggest that That the experimental light water reactor is moving closer to coming online and that the enrichment facility there is still operating.

So I don't know why we didn't say any of this stuff because it's all true.

Aaron 3:12

I have a hypothesis. I mean, in many respects, we kind of owe some of the popularity of the show to sort of the fire and fury era, right? Where things were so raucous with the DPRK that while this is news – It's not that sort of big boom type news. And so it's just kind of like amongst us, right?

It was just like, yeah, they're kind of doing what we expected them to do. And it's not really as sexy or as loud as a missile test or even a nuclear weapons test.

Jeffrey 3:45

I suppose that's right, Aaron. But I just still feel kind of like an idiot.

Aaron 3:52

You guys shouldn't feel like an idiot considering all the stuff that you do, the stories you've broken and all that. But my guess is that you guys were following this too in tandem with the IAEA. I guess not separately from the IAEA, but with the same access to similar satellite imagery and we're coming to similar conclusions.

Jeffrey 4:13

Oh, we all were. 38 North was publishing on it. And, you know, I guess because they're – Because their regular updates were kind of just going into that great void, I guess we never really stepped back and said, hey, this is kind of a big deal. But we should talk about all the signatures we see, which is a nice case study in monitoring a facility using open source imagery.

But then also, I think, talk a little bit about why North Korea is operating a reactor and separating plutonium. Although, to me, those things are obvious.

Aaron 4:50

Yeah, well, let's, I mean, the IAEA, it's actually very clear and very nice. Goes right down the list of things that they were looking for with signatures. And it's a good case study. I mean, do you want to go through it?

Jeffrey 5:02

Yeah, so I think we should probably start with the gas graphite reactor, which is where North Korea makes plutonium. As the name gas graphite suggests, it's cooled with gas, with carbon dioxide. But the hot carbon dioxide has to be cooled itself. You have to find some way to get the heat out of the gas so you can recycle it through the reactor core to keep taking heat out.

And so in the old days... Back before the Bush administration, North Korea had a big cooling tower. And so they pumped river water in. And there was – there's a turbine, which I think is mostly for decoration, not really for electricity generation. And the river water would – Be heated through a heat exchanger, and it could turn the turbine as steam, and then the hot water would run through a pipe to this giant cooling tower where, you know, it would kind of splash down, and you would see those kind of big, kind of fluffy steam clouds or or condensation clouds coming up off of the off of the cooling tower. but you know, the Bush administration Decided, with the disablement agreement that they reached with North Korea in 2008, and by the way, I am not being unkind to them, they said this to Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post, they said that they, they felt like they didn't have like a big showy photo op for the disablement of the reactor because they were disabling it, they weren't actually dismantling it, and

Bush had promised that they were going to get disarmament or dismantlement, not just a freeze, which Clinton had got. And so then he actually settled for a freeze, but he couldn't call it that. So they called it disablement and they decided that at least they could get a pretty picture out of it. And so they persuaded the North Koreans to blow up the cooling tower.

And we used to use the cooling tower to monitor whether the reactor was operating.

Aaron 7:05

Right. But yeah, I remember the I remember the imagery. Of the big explosion.

Jeffrey 7:11

Right. But once they blew down the cooling tower, we didn't have that. And North Korea eventually – they start building this other reactor, which they claim is a light water reactor. And there's a big debate about what it really is or isn't. And next to that, they built a pump house. And they seem to connect that pump house – To the cooling line and eventually started operating the gas graphite reactor again.

Probably, probably is maybe even too strong, possibly using that pump house.

Aaron 7:46

I remember the great find of the pump house. Was it you guys who did it or was it somebody else?

Jeffrey 7:51

It was Nick Hansen and I noticing it in 38 North.

Aaron 7:55

That's right. Because I remember it was on 38 North, but I thought you were involved.

Jeffrey 7:58

I think it was that pump house. I mean, we don't really know. And, you know, that's what they did in Syria. In Syria, the reactor was a pump house. And, I mean, it's the craziest thing because in Syria they had two pump houses. They had one on site and one from the river. And it was just river water.

As far as I could tell, they didn't really treat it or anything. I mean, I'm sure they, like, you know, like, ran it through some mesh or something to, like... Keep any fish out, but just run in river water through the secondary cooling loop. And that's apparently what they did at Yongbyon. And now, then they built another pump house.

And so it actually looks to us now like there are these two reactors, and each has their own pump house, and each has their own place where water comes out. And so probably they're separate, I guess, you know, it's still a little bit confusing to us. And what the IAEA found is at the location of the new pump house next to the gas graphite reactor, starting in about, what the IAEA found is starting in July, water started coming out of the pipe.

Next to the new pump house. And that's a sign that the gas graphite reactor is operating. And we've got, we have like 11 clear images in July and August from Planet Maxar and Airbus, and they all show water coming out. So that's like a pretty good sign that the reactor is hot, and they got to find a way to get rid of that heat.

And the visual signature is a jet of water spitting out into the Kuryong River.

Aaron 9:42

Yeah. They're boiling fish, Aaron. They're boiling fish. You can eat them too, right? You can eat them. Yeah, and that's what the IAEA reports. It basically says is that there were no indications of reactor operation from early December 2018 to the beginning of July 2021. And so you get your water spurt at the pump house somewhere in July, it seems like.

Jeffrey 10:04

Yeah. And it's been consistent, right? It's been all through July and August, every time we get a clear picture, there's only one day when we don't see water spurting out. And even on that day, it looks a little moist. So I would say that they have probably operated that reactor pretty consistently for two months. And they're not particularly shy about hiding it.

I mean, I do think it is a kind of interesting feature of this reactor that it just spits water out into the river. They didn't – in Syria, they buried the outflow.

Aaron 10:34

Right. I remember this.

Jeffrey 10:35

So that it would be much harder to see the water coming out. And here they're – they're like, fuck you guys.

Aaron 10:42

Yeah. We're rolling with it, right? We're not bringing in the diggers.

Jeffrey 10:48

We get this question of like, well, like why – like why are they running the reactor – It's a plutonium production reactor. Like, that's why they're running the f***ing reactor.

Aaron 10:58

Well, I was going to wait to get into this because when this news came out... Let's come back to that. But that was one of the head-scratching things I saw on Twitter. But let's go back to it because there was more, right? But wait, there's more. There's more signatures. So it's not just that we saw the water being spit out by the pump house back into the river.

It's that there were other indications that... Elements of this process were firing back up, if you will.

Jeffrey 11:29

Right. So the other thing that I consider the kind of bigger observation is that across the river, North Korea has a reprocessing facility. And that's the place where they take older loads of spent fuel and harvest the plutonium. And that place is kind of hard to see if it's operating, but it's steam powered. They have their own power plant.

I guess I shouldn't say it's steam powered. They have a power plant, and I do think it is steam heated. But the power plant next to the reprocessing facility only operates when they are reprocessing. And so over about a five-month period earlier in the year, there are frequent – Images showing exhaust coming out of the power plant next to the reprocessing facility.

And so again, that's a sign that they're in the act of harvesting plutonium. It's kind of hard to see, and you don't always get a visible exhaust. I mean, there's weather and climactic conditions that make a difference there. But what that suggests is that in addition to making fresh plutonium In the reactor at Yongbyon, they took an old load of plutonium and separated that out.

So they've got, you know, more frosting for the donuts.

Aaron 12:54

Right.

Jeffrey 12:55

Or jelly for the donuts. I don't know what the metaphor is.

Aaron 12:57

I was going to make you clarify that for the listeners, but you did it. This was an old reactor load that had been sitting around. This is not the one that was coming from the recently turned on gas graphite reactor.

Jeffrey 13:10

Yeah, I got a nice call from a smart reporter who was confused because that person was like, wait, don't you have to make the plutonium in the reactor before you reprocess it? It was like, yes, you are correct. They have an old load of fuel, which they're harvesting, and then they are burning up a new load of fuel.

So lots and lots and lots of plutonium.

Aaron 13:34

Right. Okay. Is there anyone? Okay. And we're going to talk about why we think they're doing that, which is, I think, obvious. And then we have the centrifuge enrichment facility. Do we want to go through that? And then also the other reactor?

Jeffrey 13:48

Yeah, I mean, the centrifuge facility, it's a little harder to see if it's operating or not. They do have coolers and sometimes you can see a little evidence that the cooling system might be working. But, you know, they're like vehicles moving around. And so I think this is one of the reasons that we really struggled with recognizing that this was a big story that we should have been reporting on.

Like it's active, you know, it's, it's not, it's there aren't any cobwebs on that facility. So you're seeing vehicles and other activity at the facilities around them. And like, that's, that's pretty busy. And then with the experimental light water reactor, which I just, the North Koreans have said is an experimental light water reactor, but no one's ever been inside.

So we don't actually know that it is. I mean, like, They say that it is, they put a dome over it. So, okay. But you know, I'd like to be inside first. Would you really though? Okay. You're right. I'd like someone else to go inside. Send Sig back. Sig Hecker can go back.

Aaron 14:57

It's been a while. I think it's been, I think it's been a while since, since we're all vaccinated. Send them in.

Jeffrey 15:02

Yeah. I love Sig. I love Sig, but better him than me. The place where that thing spits out water has been spitting out tiny little bits of water, not like all the time, which would be consistent with with it operating. But but just little bits, which, you know, and again, other people notice notice this. I think Allison Puccione caught them doing it maybe even two years ago.

It looks like they're checking out the pumping and cooling system. I mean, again, it's also possible these things are all linked and it's, you know, water from the other reactor. I have no freaking idea. But, you know, like. North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, which, by the way, Bob Woodward gave access to the letters that Trump and Kim exchanged to Bob Carlin.

Did you see this? So Bob Carlin wrote an op ed where a long article for foreign policy in which he talked about those letters. And, you know, part of those letters are about the discussion they have about whether to close Yongbyon or not. Which North Korea saw as a pretty big concession, and a lot of people in the U.S. didn't see it as a big concession.

I don't know how big of a concession it was, but boy, I wish that place were freaking closed.

Aaron 16:21

It's perfect being the enemy of good enough, at least in incremental steps to build confidence, but that's been a reoccurring theme on this podcast.

Jeffrey 16:27

It's perfect being the enemy of ****, but probably better than dying in a nuclear war. There you go.

Aaron 16:35

But it'll help your book sales.

Jeffrey 16:37

Ah, you know. Yeah, actually, I just had a colleague write me a very nice note about the novel in which he embarrassedly admitted that he hadn't read it until now.

Aaron 16:47

I'm really not blowing smoke. I bought that novel the day it came out in Barnes & Noble in New Jersey, and I sat down to read it, and I finished it in an evening because it was that good. It was very easy to read. I mean that as a compliment, and that's not just because you're my friend and co-host.

Jeffrey 16:59

Small words. I used small words. That was my secret.

Aaron 17:02

Small words. That's right. It was big font, so I was able to go through it fast. So – One of the things that was perplexing to me is that as this was all going down, there was actually – maybe it wasn't real. Maybe it was performance art on Twitter, which much of Twitter is. It's like people really asking what they were doing, like the North Koreans.

I know. What message are they trying to send?

Jeffrey 17:28

It's a fucking mystery. I don't know.

Aaron 17:31

And it was framed, as most US stories are, around like this was a test for Biden. I know. And I'm just thinking like –

Jeffrey 17:39

Correlation causation two things can be entirely separate of each other it just seems like the North Koreans to me are making more plutonium they want more plutonium it's not that complicated it is a little bit like forgive the offensiveness but it's a little bit like if you had a friend who got like a video of his partner with someone else and your friend is looking at the video going like well What message is she trying to send?

Is this a test? Why is she doing that? Like, guy, like... My dude. It's pretty obvious. Like, this is not that complicated, you know? And so, yeah, like, North Korea wants more plutonium. And I do have... Some thoughts about why they want more plutonium and what they plan to do with the plutonium that is more complicated than make more nuclear weapons, but if you got nothing else out of this podcast, just walking away going like, North Korea is making more plutonium because they want more nuclear weapons, like that's, that is like 90 of the story, and I get it, that's a short, you know, it's not many column inches.

Aaron 19:08

No, no, it's not.

Jeffrey 19:09

I mean, this article is like North Korea restarts plutonium production reactor. You know, when asked for comment about rationale. Weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis said it's pretty obvious, isn't it? Exactly.

Aaron 19:27

Well, I just remember. But to loop it back to your original question, that's why you guys didn't jump on it. It's because it's so obvious.

Jeffrey 19:35

I know, I know, I know. But at the same time, I do think if we had been thinking about this, we would have been much more forthright about saying in the spring, North Korea is conducting a reprocessing campaign, adding plutonium to its arsenal. And then North Korea is restarting its reactor, creating more plutonium, which will eventually be reprocessed.

Because when it came out together... I just, I don't know. The logic kind of was a little bit messed up because you got to make the plutonium before you reprocess it. So it just, I wish we had, I wish we had been more direct. But, you know, Kim Jong-un told us he was going to do this. I mean, it isn't like the North Koreans have been promising not to do this.

I mean, it's the opposite. In January, he gave a big speech in which he was like very clear that North Korea was going to make more nuclear weapons and that they were going to make nuclear weapons of different types.

Aaron 20:37

And that he's on a diet.

Jeffrey 20:39

He's looking pretty svelte. I don't know.

Aaron 20:42

I was looking at a picture of him today and he really has lost weight. I was wondering if he had a stomach staple.

Jeffrey 20:51

I don't know.

Aaron 20:52

I don't know.

Jeffrey 20:53

I mean, it's probably not hard for him to find a personal trainer.

Aaron 20:57

No, I don't think so. But what is your speculation beyond, you know, sort of the 90-10 rules? The 90% takeaway is that they want more nuclear weapons, but you have some broader thoughts on it.

Jeffrey 21:09

Okay, so this is the like, this is the like, people don't want to hear. And this is like 2016 where I kept telling people that North Korea wanted an ICBM and a thermonuclear weapon. And people looked at me like I was insane. I remember I went on Christiane Amanpour on MSNBC and said this. And it was like, in 2016, the idea of them with a thermonuclear weapon was so far out of people's expectations for them, even though it was just a year or so away.

What Kim said in January... Is that North Korea was going to shift to the development of tactical nuclear weapons. And so if we think of the first phase of their nuclear program as having a deterrent to an invasion, which is the ability to hit the United States with a thermonuclear weapon, which is pretty deter-y, right? Like, I'm deterred.

The other piece of their strategy has always been to use nuclear weapons against US forces in South Korea and Japan on the first day of a war to blunt an invasion. They have always said that they plan to do that. And the first argument against that plan, even though that's what the North Koreans say and exercise to do is, well, that would be crazy because then we would just nuke them.

It's like, well, no, not if they have thermonuclear weapons on ICBMs, you might not. Right? Mm-hmm.

Aaron 22:39

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 22:40

But then the second objection, which was a fair point, is, well, at this point, they don't really have those systems. Right? They don't have a lot of very reliable short-range ballistic missiles. They don't have enough nuclear weapons to do that kind of thing. And what we saw last year is they tested, you know, what, three different, over the last two years, I guess, three different types of new short-range ballistic missiles?

Aaron 23:06

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 23:08

And like so what do they need? They need more nuclear weapons. What do you need for more nuclear weapons? You need more plutonium. So I think this is part of that shift that they are continuing to add to their arsenal because they're now going to build out their tactical nuclear weapons stockpile.

Aaron 23:27

So what you're saying is essentially they're preparing to fight a nuclear war.

Jeffrey 23:32

Right, and people act like that's crazy, but you know what was actually really crazy and stupid and not great defense planning? Saddam's idea that he was going to fight a home game.

Aaron 23:42

No, no, totally.

Jeffrey 23:44

That was stupid. The, I'm going to run from spider hole to spider hole while my troops mount a valiant conventional defense of Iraq. That was dumb.

Aaron 23:53

Yeah. And it's not unprecedented. That's the term I'm looking for. It's not unprecedented. No, it's Pakistan's strategy. And it's all lifted from the American and Russian playbooks.

Jeffrey 24:07

Yeah. Right? There's a huge advantage going first.

Aaron 24:10

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Well, especially... Well, the huge advantage going first, and in the process, if you get hit back and there's still an invasion thereafter, you still have more forces behind you. That's right. In this crazy world. By the way, we have to say this is crazy, but this is the way some people think.

Jeffrey 24:26

Right. Well, I mean, I remember in the documents that exist about US decision making involving the Korean War. One of the big arguments about whether or not to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s, which really were service prerogative arguments, the Air Force wanted to use them, the Army didn't, right? Which made sense, because at that point, the Air Force had them and the Army really didn't.

So it's just, the more things change. But one of the Army's objections was that because we had to bring all our forces in through ports, And concentrated them, that we actually made a much better set of targets for a nuclear attack from the Soviets. Than the North Koreans made for us. And so they were worried about if we use nuclear weapons and then the Soviets got involved, that we would actually be worse off.

And I think that's still true, right? If you're planning on bringing in huge amounts of forces, ammunition, food, fuel, just all the stuff you need to conduct an invasion, which, you know, the invasion of Iraq had an enormous sea lift requirement. Bringing all that stuff into the Korean peninsula the best time to hit it is as it's all you know bottled up in port when you know you're trying to unload stuff so I mean it's it's desperate but like people again people are always like well they would never do that but it's like well the North Koreans have been really clear that like the I am too good for that strategy like just did not work for Saddam or Gaddafi like it just it didn't So what does Kim Jong-un have to lose if he thinks an invasion is coming?

Aaron 26:16

Yeah, and I think the place to do the final pivot here is looking at the diplomatic side of this, which is we had four years of Trump, the letters, the meeting in Singapore, the meeting in Vietnam. The negotiating position doesn't get any better for the United States, even if you have a more competent administration, right? Like facts are facts in terms of what the North Koreans are building.

Jeffrey 26:42

That's right. And it's one of the reasons that I was an advocate of taking the deal in Hanoi. And I wrote a little memo about this during the campaign, which I, you know, threw over the transom and I think was wadded up and thrown back to me. But. If we don't accept that they have this general deterrent, which is just the ICBMs and a thermonuclear force, right?

If we, if we choose to go down the route of like, well, we will find a way to negate that and we let them keep building. They are shifting to this other strategy. I mean, I think they've always had this other strategy, but they're now shifting to acquiring the components of, And as we are sitting here saying it's unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable, that reactor is running.

And so I think it's exactly like we found where we spent 20 years telling them how unacceptable their desire to have a capability to target the US homeland was. And they were just like, okay, very unacceptable. Got it. And then did it. And, like, right now we're, like, still talking about how unacceptable that capability they have is while they're building this other capability.

And so, like, finding a way to, like, freeze the development of these new systems, freeze the production of additional plutonium is really worth doing. Because I think I understand very clearly what they're doing. And, like, it's not safe. It is not great to have them relying on nuke the shit out of you on day one as their primary defense strategy.

Because, you know, I mean, this is actually the scenario in the book, right? Where there's some confusion about whether it's day one or not. And, you know, okay, that was easy to gin up because that confusion was, you know, partly created by the president's ill-advised tweets. But, you know, we've seen... We've certainly seen misperception and miscalculation before.

Leaders are stupid.

Aaron 29:01

And they're busy. And they're stupid. They're busy. And they don't spend all their time thinking about this.

Jeffrey 29:07

Do you know Saddam did not believe Bush was going to go all the way to Baghdad? No, I know. His life depended on that. And it was very obvious to everyone in the United States Bush was going all the way to Baghdad. And like Saddam's walking around going, no, he's not. So I just – the idea that Kim Jong-un is going to always have a perfect set of judgments about like what Joe Biden or Donald Trump Jr. or Chelsea Clinton or whoever the hell we're going to have next.

Aaron 29:36

Larry Elder.

Jeffrey 29:37

Yeah, Larry Elder, right? Like I mean that's – it's a very heroic assumption that Kim Jong-un is not going to fuck it up in a crisis.

Aaron 29:47

Last point. It also dovetails with one of your main – If I'm remembering correctly, are arguments that in addition to the nonproliferation component of this, I guess the arms control component of this, is that a peace treaty, a formal peace treaty is actually worth pursuing because it takes away some of those misperceptions, or at least it takes away some of the tensions that could drive misperceptions.

Jeffrey 30:13

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think... Threat reduction is a really worthwhile thing to do. I mean, I have said over and over again, I think the deal the North Koreans want is the Israel deal, which is that they have the weapons, but they don't talk about them. We don't see them in parades. They don't test them. They don't brag about them.

And we may think that that's an undesirable outcome. And like compared to the deal we had in 1994. Yeah, it is undesirable. Right. But again, Compared to the world we live in now, let alone the world that we are about to move into, just getting them to accept opacity to bring tension down and finding a way to get to the point where Kim doesn't think our goal is to topple him, you know, is probably worth doing.

I mean, I just... I don't know. I mean, the other thing we could do is we can just go like, you know, straight hardcore deterrence and just be like, we hate you and we're going to squeeze you and we're going to make this as hard for you as possible. And we're going to hope you collapse. And, you know, like he might.

But, you know, you're running some non-trivial risks doing that.

Aaron 31:35

And he looks to be in good shape, so he may live a little longer than we assumed. But with that, I have nothing left to add. Anything left you want to say? No, no, just, you know, I don't know.

Jeffrey 31:47

Maybe try something different. Try the fish for a change.

Aaron 31:52

Try the fish. Try the fish. North Korean river fish. Okay. And do you know where we often talk about the satellite images? Swap recipes for North Korean river fish and on from time to time, get yourself placed in world-renowned publications like the Washington Post and The Economist. That would be our Slack channel. And to get access to our Slack channel, go to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

$3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Join the club. It's the Soho House for the nonproliferation community. It's where you want to be. Jeffrey, it's good to be with you.

Jeffrey 32:34

It's good to talk to you, Aaron. And have a good rest of the day, everybody, and thanks for listening.