Res Communis

Commercial Satellite Imagery of Yongbyon Nuclear Site from May 26, 2009

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

Source: ISIS

May 27, 2009

Commercial Satellite Imagery of Yongbyon Nuclear Site from May 26, 2009

Several South Korean news agencies have reported that North Korea may have begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at its plutonium separation plant at Yongbyon1. These reports apparently reference recent classified US imagery which reportedly show steam present at the reprocessing facility. North Korea runs an adjacent coal-fired plant to generate steam for processes at the reprocessing plant. Commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe taken on May 26, 2009 does not show any steam from the pipes running from the coal-fired plant to the reprocessing plant (see figure 1). The May 26th imagery also does not show any smoke from the chimney at the coal-fired plant, nor any plume from the stacks at the reprocessing plant (see figures 2 and 3). North Korea
announced in April that it intended to reprocess spent fuel at the facility. It is difficult to know when that reprocessing will start or finish.

There also does not appear to be any construction activity at the site of the destroyed cooling tower for the 5MW reactor at Yongbyon (see figure 4). North Korea had disabled the cooling tower in a dramatic implosion in June of 2008.