NORTH KOREAN FISSILE MATERIAL: A NEW MODEL

A major challenge for the international community is negotiating a nuclear agreement with North Korea that results in its verifiable disarmament. An eventual disarmament process will require knowledge of North Korean fissile material inventories and associated facilities to compare with those offered in negotiations and any initial declarations in a resulting agreement. Open-source analyses since the inception of the North Korean nuclear program have provided significant insight into DPRK (Democratic People s Republic of Korea) fissile material production capabilities. Yet, outside intelligence communities, the full extent of DRPK fissile material production is unknown, particularly for highly enriched uranium production. Using a new open-source analysis methodology, spanning the full fuel cycle, we describe a model that provides new boundaries on estimated fissile material inventories based on known and inferred facilities. The model uses probability distributions, developed using open-source analysis, that are input into a fuel cycle simulation built in the UK National Nuclear Laboratory’s Orion software. The model, its results, and tools for analysts and policy makers to explore the outputs will be presented. Such an analysis can provide a broad range of stakeholders without access to advanced national technical means with the best information possible to support negotiations and verification of the North Korean nuclear program.